Putting what Humpty Dumpty’s camera captured back together

“I had to take up go-go dancing to supplement my income.” - Gavin Furlonger, photographer

Telford Vice / Cape Town

TWENTY-EIGHT stairs rise from Gallery F’s entrance in Cape Town’s Shortmarket Street to the exhibition space. The stairs are draped with velvety half-light. The space above is bathed in blissful brightness.

Besides representing fine art photographers including Jodi Bieber and David Lurie, the gallery is the home of the Photographic Archival and Preservation Association of South Africa — which founder Gavin Furlonger estimates has gathered around a million negatives.

Some are beyond repair. Others are treasures.

A handful of negatives (Photo: Telford Vice).

“This is a love affair,” Furlonger says. “Sometimes I ask myself what on earth am I doing?”

It’s not unlike trying to put what Humpty Dumpty’s camera captured back together again.

Gavin Furlonger (Photo: Telford Vice)

Furlonger had to do that when his phone rang with an offer of Anne Fischer’s oeuvre. Born in Berlin, Fischer fled the Nazis to Cape Town in March 1937 and became a renowned theatre photographer.

“I said, whoa! Don’t touch anything! I’m on my way! And there was this insane collection of work. It turned out to be all that was left from her 46 years as a photographer. She left her studio and all her material — negatives, prints, everything — in the care of her assistant, who couldn’t manage the upkeep. So she put an ad in the paper: ‘Come and get it or I’m going to have to get rid of it’.

“Nobody came and got it. And so it got binned. Forty-six years of negatives! It’s a tragedy. But we are very lucky because I’ve managed to find some existing work.”

Furlonger brims with such stories. His own tale is up there. A Londoner from Chelsea, he came to Cape Town in 1968. Why?

“I was chasing my heart.”

Did he catch it?

“She married somebody else the day I arrived.”

He remained in Cape Town and stumbled onto his life’s path when he took a job as a photographer’s assistant, which paid R75 a month.

“So I had to take up go-go dancing to supplement my income.”

Furlonger became one of South Africa’s leading fashion photographers. He also caught his heart with someone else, and now he and his son Sean own and run Gallery F.

Sean Furlonger searches for an archived image (Photo: Telford Vice).

“The idea is to scan and catalogue and archive all the work that we have to make it accessible online for people to use as research,” Sean says. “If anything happens to the negative, the image is still available somewhere else. If you lose a box of negatives, they’re gone forever.”

A visitor to Gallery F (Photo: Telford Vice).

The project costs the Furlongers more than R800,000 of their own money every year. Hence they are open to offers from investors who will need, besides money, a certain patience and a reasonable pair of knees.

Take your time going up the stairs (Photo: Telford Vice).

Climbing 28 stairs isn’t particularly challenging, but it takes several minutes at Gallery F. Because the walls alongside the staircase are richly hung with the work of giants like Roger Ballen, Jürgen Shadeberg, Obie Oberholzer, Ginger Odes and Billy Monk.

Each photograph demands attention, respect and time. And that takes decent knees.

Sunday Times Lifestyle