Kin Bentley In Line: Familiar faces

Monday, November 29, 2010

Familiar faces

Between 1992 and 1994, I was reporting on the EP Herald in Port Elizabeth, and during that time I made sketches of various characters, many of them on the city council, which was in the process of negotiating a new dispensation with leaders from the black community.

I can't place this old woman, but rather like the drawing.

The oke on the left with the hooded eyes is the then National Party mayor, Koos Nel, while the old guy on the right is Graham Young, a former mayor, who was a member of the Democratic Party.

Another prominent DP councillor was Flip Potgieter. Despite being Afrikaans, he was one of the most progressive DP members and would later join the ANC.

I've mentioned this old Nat councillor before on an earlier posting, but his name now eludes. I know there is a road named after him in PE. Such is fame.

I remember this profile as that of a guy called Brian Wasmuth, who I think was with the PE Chamber of Commerce.

This round-faced dude I can't place.

On occasion I did the odd court sketch for publication.

This isn't an exact likeness, but I'm fairly sure from the pose that it is Lourens Schoeman, who was night news editor on the Herald for many years in the 1990s.

The inimitable pose of Patrick Cull, veteran parliamentary correspondent on the Herald in the 19880s, 1990s and 2000s.

Tanya Keeling was news editor's secretary in the late 1980s and 1990s on the Herald. I was surprised, while working in the UK in 1990 and 1991, to discover that she had married Mr Cull, whose former wife, Cleonie, was a fine arts lecturer at the then PE Technikon.

This takes us back to 1985, when I was on the Evening Post. It is an interesting historical picture, taken by Mike Holmes, who is still at Newspaper House. Note the old editing system, called Atex. I'm the dude with the tired shoes and ridiculous moustache. The others are (from left) Cathy Schnell, Jane Cunningham, Kevin Udemans, and Sharlene Clayton. I wonder where they are today? Notice that Kevin is trawling through a file of clippings in the pre-digital library era. The black-and-white photo would have been developed by Mr Holmes in our darkroom. It has been cropped, using china marker, for use apparently in a feature on the editing system which was carried in the Weekend Post. Back then - and the system was used through until the mid-1990s to late 1990s, when it was replaced by the Tera Goodnews editing system - we sat at desks sans computers. Only once we had our story would we find a terminal, log on, and do our thing.

This girl with fly-away hair also resembles Tanya, or Tanga as she was sometimes known.

I can't be sure who this was, but he has all the hallmarks of a seasoned journalist in terms of posture and pose.

Inevitably, I would end up listening to a bit of jazz somewhere.

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About this blog

This blog has morphed from one thing to the next, and will continue to do so.

The latest offerings are of a political nature, though the main role of the blog is to put online scanned versions of my sketches, which make up the bulk of the first part.

* Earlier, I returned to a project I suspended on September 12, 2011, namely posting clilppings from my writings in the Herald newspaper in Port Elizabeth. From those you'll have gleaned that I was first prevented from writing political letters and articles critical of the ANC government.

Then my art reviews came under fire - from the hallowed halls of academia, no less.

* Before this, I posted a series of book reviews and an account of recent travels.

* There is also a short autobiographical novel, Little K and the Big World.

Below is a summary of what was posted before that. (NB. To view pictures larger, hold down "shift" and left click on the mouse. Click again to see it even larger.)

* During the 27 years I have worked as a journalist, I have kept random samples of my work. Initially, when I joined the Evening Post in Port Elizabeth in 1984, I kept a scrapbook, so those first years – when the anti-apartheid struggle really started hotting up – are fairly well covered.

By the time I joined the Eastern Province Herald in about 1988, I’d stopped collecting my stories, but I have one article I wrote that year which I think captures the mood of those dark times.

During two years in the UK – 1990 and 1991– when I worked as a correspondent for the SA Morning Newspaper group, I kept no cuttings. The same applies to the early 1990s when, back on the Herald, I covered the gradual transition to democracy. After the April 27, 1994, first non-racial elections, I moved to the sub-editing department, where I have been ever since.

When Robert Mugabe started his crackdown in 2000, I took up the pen again in a big way – and was lucky to have been given space by then editor Ric Wilson to vent my spleen in the Herald. In between, I wrote numerous book reviews and art crits, which balance out the offerings. I began this section with the more recent stuff, from 2000 onwards, and will take up this project again in 2012.

* Having all but exhausted my sketches on this blog - though I have yet to post pictures of my paintings and a few carvings - I thought I would digress into other areas of interest, and use a few of my photographs to illustrate them.

As Thabo Mbeki and the ANC set about rubbishing everything to do with our colonial past, I found myself rather cherishing what our ancestors had done here, notwithstanding my obvious detestation of the apartheid system which, had Jannie Hofmeyr lived to succeed Smuts after the Second World War, may not have happened. It is interesting to note that the National Party came to power in 1948 despite polling 100 000 fewer votes than the United Party. This was the effect of "loading" the urban constituencies.

Anyway, the East Cape has seen a fair share of interesting history down the centuries, some of which is covered here.

There is also history in stamps and envelopes. A few years back I went to a Port Elizabeth antique shop in the hopes I could acquire some old SA stamps from my youth. At first things looked bleak. The dealer only had posh albums of expensive stamps. But wait, he said, I do have a couple of black bin bags cluttering up the place somewhere, full of useless old stamps and envelopes. He gave them to me for about R100, if I recall correctly.

From these I have made several postage stamp-based artworks, photos of which I'll be posting, eventually. I also discovered a treasure trove of envelopes which had been posted to the City Treasurer of the PE Municipality as well as to the Divisional Council and another whole batch sent by dealers around South Africa to the Ford Motor Company in PE. These all date from the early 1960s, so we're talking 50 odd years ago. Each envelope tells a story.

* Initially I started this blog to illustrate how I learnt the art of drawing, after many years of toil, and how, once learnt, this skill has accompanied me throughout my life.

At each step, since about the mid-1970s, I have, where possible, made drawings that are often a more telling record than any photographs.

You will find a plethora of styles and techniques, but the bottom line – forgive the pun – is an attempt to get at the visual truth. As we go along, I explain each work and how I came to do it – that is, where I remember precisely when they were made.

* Remember, as this is a blog, the story starts from the first post and works its way upwards, as it were.

Click on the images to see them in a larger format. If you want an image to fill your computer screen, press F11. Press the same key to escape.

My thanks, again, go to my son, Douglas, who was just 16 when he helped me put together the header for this blog. Most of the more creative ideas - and all the technical expertise - in this regard were his.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Familiar faces

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