'Colour was too sweet for Apartheid', said the South African photographer David Goldblatt, famously. He was accounting for his use of black and white film through decades of racist white minority rule. Several decades later the citizens of Johannesburg announce their passing presence via a loud assembly of colour and pattern. They are captured in fleeting interactions against the backdrop of fantastical street art and rugged ageing architecture, reflecting the hybrid identities and personal creativity of random passers-by going about their everyday business.

These episodic portraits lightly record pedestrians as they pass by the graffiti murals of Fordsburg, Doornfontein, Braamfontein, Hillbrow, Berea, Kensington, Jeppestown and City and Suburban – often on public holidays.South Africa has many public holidays, some established in response to particular moments in the country’s history – Heritage Day, Youth Day (commemorating the June 16 massacre when protesting Soweto school children were killed by apartheid police), Human Rights Day, Freedom Day (commemorating the day Nelson Mandela cast his first vote after spending 27 years in prison) and Day of Reconciliation. Each of these public holidays holds different meanings for Johannesburg’s varied communities and intersecting cultural enclaves. Johannesburg’s cultural diversity is most abundantly apparent on its public holidays, and in the inner city, everyone dresses up. South Africa’s wealthiest and most populous city, Johannesburg, is at once a vital, rich and functioning metropolis and a dystopian city approaching the brink of multi-modal collapse. Rolling electricity blackouts, water cuts, high crime rates, corruption and rising unemployment have catalysed waves of violent protest and episodes of lawlessness, such as the xenophobic violence that erupted in September 2019 and the politically fueled anarchic riots of 2021. Since the discovery of gold in 1886, Johannesburg has been an economic mecca. The rate of urbanisation since the early 90s has been extremely high, driven by in-migration but strongly characterised by the arrival of migrants from around Africa. As capital has deserted the inner city, Johannesburg’s oldest suburbs have become sites of radical, ongoing change.

The series reflects on how the city’s inhabitants live with resilience and grace in the shadows of colonial, apartheid and postcolonial spaces and structures.

The series marks the 30 of democracy in South Africa in 2024.