Local designer seeks photographer of popular household artwork

A local designer needs your help to find out about a piece of much-loved household art, writes Jessica Evans

They were considered family and watched over many a meal, smiling at the guests and listening to conversations about school and work, family tiffs and celebrations.

But no one knows their names.

They are the mother and child in the portrait that hung on the wall in many black South African households in the 1970s and '80s.

Mother and Child, The Crying Child, The Twins, The Afro: these were the prints that graced township homes, salons, clinics.

The Mother and Child photograph was so familiar that some thought - and still think - it was a portrait of themselves or a sibling and their own mother.

block_quotes_start When you look at Mother and Child there’s something very serene about it, there’s something very powerful about it  block_quotes_end

"I honestly thought that was my mom and my sister and I'm not alone," said voice-over artist and filmmaker Kuhle Nkosi.

He recalls the portrait being sold at markets alongside amakipkip, and hanging in hair salons.

"These pictures are things that, as black folks, we grew up with. It resonates with quintessential hoodlife," said Nkosi.

Said rapper JR: "Everybody from Pretoria and Soweto and in Cape Town and Durban all know the significance of the picture because it resembles a household, it resembles a home."

He said it resonated so strongly with black South Africans because "it could be the first picture that black people actually saw that was properly taken and wasn't of people running or ducking or burning stuff".

"It was the first organically beautiful picture of a mother and child who happened to be black," said JR.

Acclaimed photographer Peter Magubane agreed : "It is a beautiful picture. It reminds me that black is indeed beautiful."

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In this era Drum magazine was already celebrating the beauty of Africans and The World newspaper was another platform for striking social imagery despite the dominance of a Western ideal of beauty featuring glamorous celebrities.

People also took their own intimate and family portraits at home which were collected in albums and treasured.

The mother and child image was popular in the way that most Christian homes had pictures of Jesus or the Last Supper on their walls.

Nkosi said the portrait had appealed to strongly to black South Africans during apartheid because its power countered the mass oppression of the time. It defied the stereotype of black families perpetuated by the National Party government.

"When you look at Mother and Child there's something very serene about it, there's something very powerful about it as well, that I think on a subconscious level spoke to people and gave them hope."

Osmic Menoe, founder of Johannesburg's Back to the City festival, said the picture captured childhood innocence: "It's a young black female, smiling - the kid is happy being carried over the shoulder and that is a thing that every black kid and mother resonates with - we all got carried. Whether it was in the front or back, we all got carried. So it's that representation of that picture."

block_quotes_start This project isn't just about the picture and finding the mother and child. It is about a lot more block_quotes_end

For musician HHP, the picture brings back memories of the LP covers of his dad's favourite music, the smell of coffee at his grandmother's house, school holidays.

"It takes me back to the very things that make us South African," said HHP - even though he is one of those who believe the origins of the picture lie outside the country.

"A lot of the people back then were perming their hair or they had it kind of natural ... and the hair I saw on this lady instantly said 'this can't be South African'," he said.

South Africans, though, took ownership of the photograph - and now they want to know more about it.

On Thursday, local fashion house Butan Wear and online retailer Spree will launch a social media campaign - #SearchingForMotherAndChild - to find the photographer and the subjects of the image.

The founder of the fashion house, Julian Kubel, was introduced to the image by his flatmate, Nkosi, and was immediately fascinated.

"What was most intriguing to me was the mystery that surrounds this picture. Everyone recognised the image but nobody could tell me where it originated from nor could they say anything about the identity of the mother and child."

Kubel also teamed up with Spree to produce a mini-documentary on the portrait and market the T-shirt design bearing the image.

For media personality and publicist Lerato Sengadi, the portrait is no less than "a badge of blackness".

"My neighbours, my cousins, the spaza - everybody had this picture," she said.

It reminds her of the sights and the smells of her childhood: Soweto winter Sunday evenings with the pervasive orange haze from coal stoves and the rush to get home before the street lights went on.

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Like many others, she assumed that the photograph depicted family members, and later came to believe the mother and child were in fact herself and her mother.

Photographer James Oatway commented: "Aesthetic strengths lie in the small details - the woman's eyeliner, the bracelet on the child. Clues that they are not necessarily poor or 'suffering'."

He said the image had thrived in the 1970s and '80s despite the absence of social media because of its profound themes of "pride, love and beauty" and its depiction of the nurturing maternal relationship.

"These themes become even more important given the context of an apartheid South Africa ... when the system was intent on dehumanising black Africans and breaking down their values."

He also attributed the portrait's popularity to its emotive quality: "Often the power of an image lies not in the actual content but in the emotions that the image makes the viewer feel."

These were among the considerations that, along with the enduring mystery behind the image, persuaded Kubel to immortalise it in a T-shirt design.

"This project isn't just about the picture and finding the mother and child. It is about a lot more," he said.

"It is about black identity, the bond of a family and a people, and furthermore it highlights the beauty that manages to thrive despite oppression and poverty."

• From Thursday, December 15, you can follow the hunt for the photographer and subjects of this famous photo on social media using the hashtag  #SearchingForMotherAndChild. You'll also be able to watch a mini-documentary on the photograph and its place in South African culture on Youtube.com/spreecoza