|
4X4
Routes
Accommodation
Adventure
Arts & Crafts
Auto Rentals
Beaches
Book Stores
Catering
Clothing
Computer
Supplies
Confectionery
Gifts
Golf
Hand Crafts
Health & Beauty
Hikes & Trails
Hospitality
Financial & Business
Internet Cafes
Kidz Zone
Kitchen
Supplies
Medical
Medical Emergency
Pharmacies
Pet Supplies
Property 4 SALE
Restaurants
Pubs & Clubs
Schools &
Facilities
Security
Shopping
Variety
Legal Services
Real Estate
Shopping Malls
Travel & Leisure
Weddings and Events
Wine Cellars
Wine Land
Lovely
& informative
other
places to look
for more
information
about
H e r m a n u s
www.
hermanus
.co.za
www.
overberginfo
.com
www.
hermanus.
com
Hermanus
Tourism Buro
Hermanus
Times
Hermanus
Golf Club
Hermanus
Whale
Festival
Hermanus
Magnetic Observatory
Hermanus
Map
Hermanus
Garden Route
Trip
Adviser
|
|
Annalize Mouton
Author of "Stanford,
Portrait of a Village"
Nosy Rosy has a brand new Book
choice column and this month I
would love to tell you more
about the remarkable woman who
gave us Stanford, Portrait of a
Village.
International spotlight on
Stanford
“Each issue of Village Life is a
hymn and ‘feel good’ poem,”
wrote none other than Hennie
Aucamp, well-known Afrikaans
author.
The publication he refers to was
started as a village newspaper
in Stanford in 2003 and has
grown into a bi-monthly journal
that focuses on South African
people, nature, history and
arts.
Husband-and-wife team Maré and
Annalize Mouton has with Village
Life not only created a
publication that highlights the
richness of our diverse country,
but Annalize went a step further
and created a book that has
attracted attention both by
local reviewers and overseas.
Stanford 150, Portrait of a
Village, was launched in
February this year and
Annalize’s unique style of
capturing natural light and the
essence of her subjects,
resulted in an invitation from
people in the Netherlands to
have her photos, which have been
likened to the painting style of
the great Dutch masters,
exhibited there. Twenty-three of
these photos are now travelling
to various centres in Holland.
On 6 January 2009 an exhibition
will be opened in the South
African Embassy in Amsterdam
The book was the result of
Annalize’s decision to
photograph “a few” people of
Stanford for an exhibition as
part of the village’s 150th
anniversary celebrations in
2007. She wanted to portray the
lives of people currently living
in the village for future
generations to enjoy. Annalize
explains this in her
introduction to the book:
”With its many well-preserved
old cottages and Victorian
houses, it is regarded as the
second best preserved village in
the Western Cape. It has a
consistent, navigable river
(sadly, slightly polluted these
days), meandering along a
mountain range with waterfalls
cascading down its fynbos-clad
slopes; it is close to the sea,
it has clean, unpolluted air;
there is a serenity in its
bucolic landscapes teeming with
birdlife; a peace and quiet,
only occasionally shattered by
the high-pitched whine of weed
cutters, chain saws, buzz bikes
and quad bikes. It is one of the
few towns in South Africa that
has retained its village green
which in Stanford forms the
heart of the village, a neutral
meeting place for its people. It
is a place where children can
still safely play and ride their
bicycles in its streets (that in
the rainy season become more
pothole than street). And it’s a
place where one can sit on one’s
stoep and watch the village come
alive in the early morning or
late afternoon with people
walking their dogs (and lately
also their pet pigs), greeting
each other and often stopping
for a chat.
Its population is growing. The
sleepy little forgotten village
has come alive. There are still
a few ‘native’ Stanfordians,
those born and bred here; many
‘in-comers’ who have retired
here; and also those seeking an
‘alternative’ lifestyle and
wanting to raise their children
in a rural atmosphere –
hopefully far from the crime and
pollution and evils of big-city
life. People from all over South
Africa and the rest of the world
settle here – white, and not so
white, coloured, yellow, black
and mixed. There are the
landowners and the landless, the
troublemakers and the
peacemakers, the workers and the
loafers, the learned and the
illiterate, old people and young
people, saints and sinners, some
winners and some losers. All
have their numerous and varied
memories and stories, corporate
and individual, that needed to
be told.
In its humanity Stanford is an
archetype of many other villages
and small towns in the world –
it has even had a few suicides
and murders; and there are many
skeletons in cupboards which
preferably should be left
covered and locked up between
the moth-eaten remnants of the
past; also, undoubtedly much
futile keeping up of
appearances, because in Stanford
nothing stays a secret for long.
“Yet, there is an indefinable
but tangible difference, an
otherness, in Stanford. Some
call it an electricity, a vibe,
an atmosphere. It has been said
that Stanford chooses you and
not the other way round. Is it
so strange then that people feel
they have been inexplicably
drawn, called or sent here, and
they either love or hate it
here? It is this otherness of
Stanford and the amazing
diversity of its people that
inspired this book and to whom
it is dedicated – all the men,
women and children of Stanford
over all the ages and of all
colours, races and creeds.
After a visit to Stanford and
her grandparents Jack and
Jeannette Hutton in 2004,
Frances Kershaw, then twelve
years old, wrote and gave them
the following poem:
a heart without memories is a
cold heart
a heart without love is a stone
a heart that carries selfishness
only
is a heart that has no home
a heart that carries memories
that carries love alone
a heart that possesses love for
another
is a heart that has many homes
“This is Stanford, the place
where donkeys become human (Stênfird,
die plek waar donkies mens wird),
as the old people used to say. A
village and its people, one big
heart that is home to many, a
huge bosom nursing its people
unto maturity.”
Annalize received a surprise
visit from a German couple
recently – they spotted her book
at “The Retreat at Groenfontein”
near Calitzdorp and were
“captivated”. They wanted to
meet her and to know how she
came on the idea, as they had
launched a similar project for
the 850th birthday of their own
town, Lüchow, in Germany.
Lüchow’s book however, contains
only photos – 2 500 of them –
and this “photo-album” weighs a
hefty three and a half
kilograms! The Lüchowers were
for their part inspired by the
village of Fermignano in central
Italy, where a friend of theirs,
Dirk Roggan, saw a similar book
about the residents of that
town, published for their
more-than-2000-year-old town’s
millenium celebrations.
As Annalize already has an
exhibition scheduled for 28
January at the Art.B Galery in
Bellville, a branch of the South
African Association of Arts,
they have now decided to have a
combined exhibition of the three
villages, Stanford, Fermignano
and Lüchow, with 20-25 photos
from each village. There is
great excitement all over! The
possibilities of such an
exhibition are endless. “There
might be other towns in the
world that have embarked on
similar projects and we can only
wait and watch it grow, perhaps
something akin to The Family of
Man, the exhibition created by
Edward Steichen for the Museum
of Modern Art in New York in the
1950’s.”
Annalize’s dream of showing God
in every human to the community
and the world, of getting to
know one another by name,
looking at our fellow humans
with new eyes, hopefully, will
result in communities living
together in a new way. A remark
from one coloured woman and her
daughter, who feature in the
book, bears witness to this
dream: “It is as if the white
people are seeing us for the
first time as people.”
Perhaps the book and the
subsequent exhibitions are small
glimpses of heaven on earth, of
how it can be.
Mail us if you would like your
establishment listed here.
Nosy Rosy scrams about daily to make it Most informative 4 U
|
|
