I've recently become interested in these half/half spaces that occur in big cities. Previous posts have visually explored the one edge of Cape Town and the space that appears at the end of a city.
This post has some tentative images from the banks of the Liesbeek River. It was very much an exploratory shoot to see if there is anything worth further exploration. I'm not very happy with what I returned with but there are small pin pricks of interest.
For instance, I enjoyed the gradual urbanisation of the section I visited:
I'm also becoming fascinated by how houses opening adjacent to open spaces need to be barricaded by electric wire and high walls. Ordinarily you would expect people to embrace open spaces as extensions of their living areas. This is obviously not the case and undoubtedly because of our high crime rates in South Africa.
Finally, one can't help but fix on the ways that Cape Town's marginalised citizens become part of the city and the landscape.
According to the owner this stuffed toy was placed here as a sign of the owner's presence and that this space was occupied.
Personal belongings put aside.
Vegetable patch grown from seeds donated by Hare Krishna community.
As I said, I don't think the images are too exciting or illuminating at this point but I do think that there is a story to be explored. As always, now the hard work starts of prising open the essence of this story and building a level of trust with the communities that might be involved.
Hopefully, over the next couple of months I will be able to further illustrate the development of this story.