I was down in Cape Town last month for the installation of “Twenty Ten on the Road” the exhibition from the Twenty Ten project. The Twenty Ten project has been a partnership between World Press Photo, FreeVoice, Africa Media Online and lokaalmondiaal and funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The project enables over 120 journalists from 34 countries in Africa to be trained ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and then produce content on the run up to and during the tournament telling the story of Africa’s first soccer world cup from and African perspective. That content was offered to market, was used to create a book and is now presented in this traveling exhibition.
Above: Setting up the exhibition in a mad rush after it was held up in customs for longer than expected.
The exhibition was designed and created by World Press Photo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and first exhibited as Africa Scores in the Tropen Museum during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. My colleague at Africa Media Online, Karla Kik and I were there with our colleagues from World Press Photo on the morning of November 18 helping to install the exhibition at the Waterfront in Cape Town just outside the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island – ideal for maximizing foot traffic. The opening was that night and Ruth De Vries, Frederiek Biemans (both from World Press Photo) and I shared a platform with Dutch Consular General in Cape Town, David de Waal, and with Prof Johannes Gerwel, the chairman of the Boards of Trustees of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation(among many other significant appointments).
Above: In a prominent spot at the Waterfront the exhibition, which comprised still pictures and multimedia, saw a large number of visitors over the 10 days it was on show.
The exhibition opening was a great success with a sizeable crowd. Dominique Le Roux, who had been on the editorial team for the project was there, so too were four of the participants – Alexia Webster, Davison Mudzingwa, Samantha Reinders and Nikki Rixon. It was also good to catch up with Africa Media Online contributing photographers like Terry February, Paul Grendon, Chris Ledochowski, Jeremy Jowell and Clare Louise Thomas. It was also good to see old friends like Sari Potter (who used to be the picture librarian at South Photographs), Ryland Fisher (a former editor of the Cape Times and Executive Chair of the Cape Town Jazz Festival), Pam Warne (Curator of Photography and New Media, Iziko Museums of Cape Town), and talented Cape Town photographer Julian Goldswain. The evening also included a screening of “Twenty Ten: Through Our Own Eyes” a documentary produced by one of the project partners lokaalmondiaal. The exhibition now travels to Zambia, Kenya, Ghana and Senegal.
Above: Click on the image to see it larger. The 24 metre long exhibition which formed an amphitheatre for the showing of multimedia, packed into a shipping container.
Twenty Ten Exhibition in Cape Town
Dec 13th, 2010 by David Larsen