Corpus Urbanus (2005)

Seeking to blur the boundaries between fine art, documentary photography and photojournalism, this exhibition chronicles a two-year period during which Bussab explored the anonymity of urban life in Johannesburg and surrounds.

A series of figures in a landscape reveal very little of their condition, creating an aura of ambiguity. Says Bussab, “The images reflect a collective yearning to understand the civic condition in the big cities – and expresses our vulnerability, our sociological differences and indifferences.”

These eerie works engage the audience in a subtle interactive game, where the viewer becomes voyeur, eavesdropping on the excruciatingly private moments of anonymous citizens. The viewer is inevitably compelled to decide the fate of the subject matter: is the person sleeping, dead or just posing for the photographer?

There is an unexpected familiarity that is subsequently apparent in these images, eliciting a deeper, more complex response to man’s struggle with transcendence and his own mortality. Says Bussab, “Death is characterized by transcendence. So is dreaming. The place of rest is sacred. It’s a space where one lets go of reality and enters a ‘marginal state’ in which our identity is challenged. I show bodies lying alone in the urban landscape. In a way, you get immediately involved in the experience. Death is a collective experience, in mourning, burial, praying and meditating. When you sleep, it’s a singular and very personal journey.”

Asked about the political significance of the images, Bussab says “bodies, lying dead or asleep, are part of the landscape of Johannesburg. You could walk pass a dead person in the busiest Johannesburg street and not notice it. In South Africa, one becomes quickly desensitized to death, to poverty and to inequalities.”

Bussab is a Brazilian who has made his home in South Africa and finds many similarities between his own society and that of South Africa. “The Brazilian and South African social economic problems are similar. It’s a type of society that has to make sense of extremes. It was just an extension of the situation I grew up with. The work reflects that in a way. Another ambiguous margin.”

Words by Nick Hauser


Title: Corpus 3
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm



Title: Corpus 7
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm



Title: Corpus 5
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm



Title: Corpus 6
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm



Title: Corpus 4
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm



Title: Corpus 1
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm



Title: Corpus 8
Medium: Inkjetprint on Hahnemühle paper
Edition on 5
Dimensions: 850mm x 850mm