A few words about your artistic career
I'm a photographer and filmmaker based in Bulawayo. I'm a certified 100% cinephile! I have always loved photography and film. I think there are still many Zimbabwean stories to be told and I would love to tell them through my art.
How long have you been an artist?
I've been working in film and photography since 2008.
Why did you apply for this scholarship? How will the scholarship support you?
We need the resources to be able to achieve the project outcomes we have in mind, particularly in terms of the scope and reach we envisage. The grant will help us to achieve our project objectives more effectively.
What are your concrete artistic objectives after this residency?
We want to create more works that tell the stories of the Bulawayo community. Short films as a follow-up to this project are already in the pipeline.
What did you achieve during this creative residency? What is the result (work created)?
Our final product is a photography blog hosted on www.athousandwordszw.com. A Thousand Words is a creative photography blog project that focuses on exhibiting images captured during and after the confinement in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, while offering both professional photo journalists and less established novices an opportunity and independent platform to showcase their work and tell their stories.
The project began with three photographic walks that took place in our target area. Many of the images that arrived on site were taken during these walks. The photo walks were an interesting mix of theatre and adventure, as we were able to interact with some of the residents of these two suburbs in our quest to capture their stories. Apart from the fact that we were able to capture the images we wanted, the experience also cemented in our hearts and minds the fact that we can achieve much more through collaborative work than we can as individuals.
How do you think these activities help us to think about the world today, in relation to the COVID-19 crisis, and/or about building for the future?
Over the course of our project, it became clear that the Covid-19 plague had changed lives forever. As one of our project captions puts it: "With the rise of the global pandemic, Covid-19, many social gatherings have been restricted, with people no longer able to move around, meet, work and interact freely as they used to. People have been encouraged to isolate themselves as much as possible, to avoid 'unnecessary' human interaction. All these measures were put in place to save human lives from the virus; but what happens to human lives and to society whose main fibre has been shaped by social interaction and contact? How can these people survive and change the long-standing history of coming together to celebrate and mourn, fight, eat, drink and play? These contradictory fundamentals have left a society in distress, defying the established rules while remaining true to what it really is. Despite the difficulties and changes to which people must now adapt, it is also clear that some positive elements for our future societies have been born. Communities have once again rediscovered and learned the importance of unity and family.
How did you feel during the residency? And afterwards?
The residency has been an exciting time for me because it's given me something to do that wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't had the help I've had. I've been very happy with the process and the journey that has brought us to this point. The launch of the residency gave birth to a dream and although it has come to an end, I'm happy to say that the project continues and will continue to develop as a platform for telling stories through photography. The team I've put together has also contributed a lot to our success and I'm pleased that we've been able to show other creatives in our country that collaborations have a definite power. Although the website itself is still a work in progress, I'm pleased with what we've achieved so far.
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A thousand words
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All the work of Robson Murambiwe
