Daleside: Static Dreams

Since 2015, French photographer Cyprien Clément-Delmas and South African photographerLindokuhle Sobekwa have collaborated to create a portrait of Daleside, a small Afrikanersuburb south-east of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Daleside, in the Gauteng Province, once had apredominantly white population and is isolated in the industrial outer suburbs of Johannesburg. Its separation has resulted in Daleside’s residents becoming increasingly inward-facing, and in thespace of a decade it has become an isolated ghost town with a dwindling population consisting ofmostly mine workers and smallholders. Commissioned by Rubis Mécénat through their Of Soul and Joy programme, the resultingphotographs provide a counterpoint—Clément-Delmas’s images show dignified figures whosedreams are at odds with reality whereas Sobekwa’s landscape portraits show no such escapism. Looking beyond the deep-seated Black/white binary, they depict the poverty afflicting Blackand white residents alike as forgotten members of society stuck in a dead end. Contrary to hisexpectations of what he might find there, Sobekwa came face to face with the reality of Black andwhite residents experiencing the same poverty out of eyeshot of the tightly-guarded houses ofthe wealthy. In Daleside: Static Dreams, the images by each photographer are presented alongsideeach other in a foldout book so they can be read individually or as pairs.