arjen van de merwe
village vogue Arjen van de Merwe’s Malawi 2010
visual culture | double discourse by jason price
paradox self-fashioning class formation ambiguity africa
A dozen photographs featuring a handful of Malawians modelling locally-designed high fashion set against peri-urban backdrops playing with typical practices of everyday life likely not (or no longer) their own, Malawi 2010 invites dialogue about a whole mess of issues quietly pressing on the lives of contemporary Malawians—from gender disparity to identity management and class formation, to fresh desires in the face of old obligations, not to mention new distinctions (and divisions) erupting within increasingly tight spaces determined largely by relations to scarcity. This unappreciated series was composed by Dutch photographer Arjen van de Merwe. For the last six years has provided up-market photography to different agencies and organisations from his base in Blantyre, where he also teaches at the Malawi Institute of Journalism. 1
Unlike many contemporary cultural productions in this relatively poor, comparatively provincial, landlocked Central African country, van de Merwe’s series is ambiguous in its aims and intentions; as such, it elicits a wide range of readings. Examples include a condemnation of polygyny with reference to its shocking durability; an exposé of a new male desire that fuses contrasting forms of femininity; a rallying cry for cultural heritage in the face of encroaching modernities; a defence of cosmopolitanism via sly reference to suave corporeal ease; a steadfast denial of conservative mores rooted as much in traditional culture as in Christianity; a stinging broadside against a set of slumming, self-serving, sell-out elites; and a celebration of an inherent and timeless (yet rooted and nimble) beauty that can only be dubbed ‘African’. In this review, I emphasise van de Merwe’s use of fashion photography to explore the phenomenon of rural urbanism in twenty-first century Malawi.
6
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator