Because I'm in a cool calm office surrounded by humming air conditioners and a fridge full of Ceres fruit juices, and not spending 8 hours a day on the hot dusty chaotic streets of Kinshasa, at the moment I have less new photos and stories to blog about. I also feel like I'm finally settling in a little bit, and I'm probably getting more used to what initially seemed strange and exciting. I'll try to push my days in directions that give me more experiences I can write about.
In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of the photos I took of our parcelle, the house and yard that we rent to shoot some of the tv show at.
This is the outside of the house. I think I was told that it used to be two houses that were cut in half? There's no door, but there is a lace curtain that's pushed aside to hang over it. From what I've witnessed and heard, this is a pretty standard middle class house in Kinshasa. Two of our crew live here. There's a standard Congolese bathroom (cement hole in the ground) around back, and a tap with water by the front gate.
The house and yard are surrounded by a high wall, with a squeaky gate that locks. The bottle filled with rocks helps the door in the gate close automatically when you go through it.
Capturing the inside of the house is the closest I felt I've gotten to reaching a photographic aesthetic here that I'm really excited about. A lot of what I've been shooting is documentation, and while this is too, there's a whole other element that's pushing me to explore things deeper.
I'm finding myself being interested in walls in Kinshasa--inside and out, though the walls surrounding properties are fascinating. Most of them in the district I live in have razor wire rolled along the tops, or scary bits of spikey metal, or gorgeous pieces of sharp glass that flash in the sunlight. The emphasis is always on keeping people OUT. They succeed admirably in being impermeable...makes me think of the close-up series I did of skin. We'll see where it goes.
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