Editor's Note: What follows is a transcript of Sabelo Mlangeni in conversation with Joel Cabrita's class, "Curating the Image: Photography and the Politics of Exhibitions in South Africa." The class took place at the Cantor Arts Center on October 4, 2023 and includes responses with Charlotte Linden, Director of Academic and Public Programs at the Cantor. 

Joel Cabrita: Where did you make the video? Was the video made collaboratively? Or was it footage that you shot directly? Did you make it with this exhibition in mind? Or is it something that you had made beforehand?

Sabelo Mlangeni: No, I've made it beforehand. There was no plan to show it in an exhibition. Most of the images are made in my village in Driefontein and elsewhere in Johannesburg.

So this video was made in Driefontein. And as I've said before, it was for Kamala, my sister-in-law. After losing my brother, in South Africa, mostly Zulu culture—the woman goes through this mourning, one year mourning, and then they dress in this black dress. And then after a year, then this family ceremony, that just has to do with family, and then in the evening, that's where the church comes in. So I documented it to show the whole night and then the day and I think just that later I edited it and I've sent it back to her and asked for … I mean, they invite different people like different churches and choirs, but in this one specifically there's a group of women that get together every Thursday for praise and savings, something like that. They call them a chain, so that women come from different churches, and they come together only on Thursday.

So I took just that part of the video for this presentation. I think it was in an exhibition because we wanted to create a line between the cyberspace and the space that we were located to, so we just build a wall, which is what ties into the part of the day, we build that wall and then for the video. There's music, for me, it's something that sort of accompanied me through my journey, traveling outside of South Africa, when I started working outside spatially. And also the fact that as a young church-goer member we were so much invested in music. So we would get together every Wednesday and Friday, just to practice.

So I was seeking to teach you all of these. We recorded with a group called Democracy, the guys that are there with the queen, and we recorded this album, and it was around 2007. I've never really listened to this. I've listened to this album, but recently, I went to look at it, listen to it before, I'm like, Jesus, I can't believe that I used to be this singer. But now I can't sing anymore. I just think there's so much in music, especially for the youth. So it made sense to me to include what I call a stage, because we're not really practicing or singing for competitions, but it's for night vigil. In the night vigil, we get invitations from other churches and then we go there with supporters to support. But there are moments where the choirs and churches, they come in groups to sing. That's where there's sort of a different kind of style and music comes in and people like you … usually it happens within just a community, and then sometimes we have other churches coming from maybe Johannesburg, for example. And then we also have this moment where we set up or we stage a music concert, just focusing on the music of youth, usually it's on weekends.

I think I have this photograph here—we were just getting together, so you use church. And then here we were a group of different churches. And we were surprised—this is my brother here and my other brother, but they were in a different church. But here also it was in another school, but in the other side of our village, but this group was coming from another village. So we had these music sessions, and knowing how the youth is investing so much time in this music. And it made sense that I include the music station in the program. So what we did, which was great, I think it doesn't happen usually where people would like to invite people and we had enough budget that I was able to bring my church from Driefontein to Johannesburg. And then also, we paid for the entire church to come to Johannesburg and sing in my church because this church I joined when I was seventeen years old.

And then there was this disconnect. So I left the church and then I joined another church. I also invited my church in Johannesburg, but also I invited another group, an outside group. So we had four groups for the music session. And it was not inside the exhibition, exactly. But it was just inside, it's in the same building, but we set up a stage, proper stage, and then the music, people, facade and everything. It wouldn't work here. There's no network.

Joel: Sabelo, am I remembering correctly that you wanted to have like an element of [unclear]?

Sabelo: There were things that I wanted to include like that. And also like—how do I explain it in English? Really difficult, but it's something that you've learned to connect with the ancestors, or maybe with spirits, Holy Spirit or something, but something that connects with the ancestors, but also you burn it when you want to. Not only burn it at church but you can also burn it at home with what you call impepho. When you're talking to the ancestors, you can also burn it at your house, or you can burn it just for yourself or just to cleanse the aura of the house. But those kinds of things, they're kind of problematic. Sometimes when you bring them into an exhibition, because that's the thing with being someone who's really inside the church, is knowing what to photograph and what not to photograph. There are things that you respect. But sometimes bringing them just for exhibition is problematic. So I did not include something like lit candles, for example. We also invited other people—I wasn't organizing alone—but other people who are very known, active in music, and also a pastor who's a very close friend of mine. So just to create sort of a mix of diversity in the whole program, just not to focus on [unclear], because at the same time, you're interested in how to stretch the whole program. So there are churches like the church that I'm in charge of right now in Johannesburg—very well off, the bishop is a principal. But also there are churches where the pastors are not really as educated, so you want to build a bridge between these two churches. So that's what I did with the music, but also by inviting a choir that is not really affiliated with any church, just young people coming together as a group.

Joel: Who did you work with at the museum to organize that? Was it Kabelo (Malatsie)?

Sabelo: I worked with Kabelo a lot. I remember when the church from home came, they got lost. They didn't even believe that they would invite them to a great museum. And then—so they got lost. And so somehow, I think they gave up, they were just sitting somewhere, they couldn't find the place. And somehow, like, "I know, Sabelo was just playing with us." One of the museum assistants … one that was quite involved in the project … the event was starting, and then he went and collected them.

Joel: They were supportive? Or how supportive were they in this?

Sabelo: They were very supportive, because they've never had that kind of program in the museum. So they were very supportive. They were much more involved in organizing the sound than the stage. It was very, very proper, it was really, really proper. And I think the feedback from everyone was that the people were very impressed. They were very impressed because it started as a walkabout. So we started with a walkabout. And then it ended up with the music station. So they got to also be part of the walkabout and really understand what is my intention or why this work is so intimate and important to me.

Joel: It strikes me in some ways that this exhibition was like the exact opposite of Cambridge, because when in Cambridge you spoke about your fear that the images would die in that space, yes, become objects of scrutiny, like people were objectified, I guess. Whereas with the Wits (Art Museum) exhibition, you have the church members, actually in that space. So just a very different dynamic gave the church much more ownership. Being part of the walkabout, being part of the program itself, seemed to me to go some way towards addressing the pain or the trauma of the exhibition in Cambridge.

Sabelo: As you mentioned, the members of the church and people that I've worked with were there. But also, in South Africa, the exhibition was addressing a lot of other things. And, as I've mentioned, how the painter came to be part of the exhibition, as some sort of dealing with healing, raising something. I invested a lot of time in South Africa. So because it was home, I think it's very important that (the music) matches the volume of when I'm showing outside. It's always amazing. If you remember, at the opening, the opening was crazy. I've never seen so many people. I've never had openings in Johannesburg before. But this opening was huge, because the bishop was there, my father, my mother, so many other people that mean so much, this upset even the people that I worked with. So there was a lot of excitement, especially with my family, with my church members. It was their first time actually to be in a gallery or museum. I remember when they made the comment about, "Oh, Sabelo, now we understand why you dress up like this. Now we saw your people." Sometimes your church and people are like, "Why are you not shaving your hair?" So there's always this kind of question, like why am I doing things differently? So for them to be in that space, it was like an eye-opener to them to understand my community outside church. And my father also was there. So it was just an amazing moment.

Joel: I think you were speaking metaphorically about the volume, but I am curious, after the day of the performances of the singing throughout the run of the show, that video had a sound component.

Sabelo: Yes.

Joel: Was that something that you could hear throughout the exhibition?

Sabelo: … This song by Hugh Masekela, "Thuma mina." Also, at the time, there was this change in South African government where Cyril Ramaphosa was becoming the new president and was using "Thuma mina" as his slogan, meaning "to be sent." It was a little bit disturbing for him to say that, you know, as if he is a savior of South Africans at that time. Some of us knew that they're not going to change anything. It's just another president. And yeah, so you could hear the sound when you come into the space.

Joel: Does anybody else have any questions about this exhibition?

Student Question: I was wondering about how you feel video translates your message differently than photography. What are you able to gain out of including a video in that exhibit, versus what is not included here since there is no video component?

Sabelo: It's a very good question, because it took me a very long time. Really, at the beginning, I didn't understand people that really didn't trust photographs, as like a stand-alone something in this case. Why do you have to include other things in an exhibition? Moving around, and then getting to see how other artists work in different spaces, and how they bring different material in the end, and also what that does to the work. It really does, here having the music on its own, you feel like you're walking into a sacred place or a church or temple. You still have photographs, but also there was something with the video, something which I was worried about. Because my editor is a friend of mine. And then his friend is part of a church from fourteen, he is a very well-known gay guy, very feminine. Bringing the video like that was also like trying to address— like, I always say that, not including such a part of that video is like erasing myself into the story. So in a way with the video I was trying to do that, also to bring myself into this space, or these conversations that are difficult in a church setting. So the burner and the video and the sticks and creating that intervention into the space—really, I think it shifted, and this was my first time to really stretch my presentation to bring other materials into specific use. I think at that time I was just very, like photography, photography. And I still believe that, yes, photography is photography, because in a book like this, you can't not have photographs. But bringing those kinds of things I feel like it has to do with this long-term research and finding these things that make sense to be included in an exhibition, and also like being creative and trying to open up the conversation.

Student Question: I'm curious if you can talk a little bit more about how the gaze of the audience, people that you were presenting this work to, influenced your curatorial vision … I mean, you hinted at this session, but I'd love to hear more about how the way they received the work changed the way you received it.

Sabelo: Upon completion, we didn't really have much feedback. Personally, I didn't really have much feedback. But when I was at the opening, it was in Wits, and I was lucky that there were two South Africans. They were very happy that I had this presentation there. But from other people I really didn't get much feedback of what they think of the exhibition. Sometimes it's very interesting to hear this feedback, because sometimes they expose not really how people think and how they're looking at images, but it's how a presentation can create a representation of a community. People can see two or three images and say, "I didn't know in Africa this existed." But it's only two or three images and these images are coming from a small region, not the whole continent. I was home, we had some really fantastic reviews. People still talk about it. Now I'm presenting in … and there was like, "This is not the same show we saw before." Same show, but different title. This was titled for South Africa, always thinking about the landscape and the space. How can one connect the work with the landscape and the space at the time the work was shown? I remember—you were there, Joel—there was one student who asked me a very interesting question. She asked, "Does the work being shown at Wits, does it change anything to the institution or to me?" And it was a very good question. I'm coming from a photo workshop, which was founded by a photographer in the early '90s, late '80s, when he realized there was a gap—we were not allowed to be in universities, in institutions of higher learning. He started this school, now it's a big institution of learning. So, for me, moving from there and then having to show the work there, and not just showing the work just to show it but having to show work that I know some of the images are very difficult, and to talk about some difficult things and also talk about Christianity, not just the happy part of it. Sort of having to have this conversation openly in a space like that and it was just after the Fees Must Fall (student-led protest movement in 2015) I was able to have this openness. This space is a space of questioning. I always think about university spaces as a space where you can ask questions. So in South Africa we had the feedback, that was good, but some people thought the exhibition stayed too long, June to September. That is not a very long time. But maybe because it was active and people would keep talking and posting about it. Someone posted, "That exhibition is still up, when is it coming down?"

Joel: I think that this brings up a larger question. I think if you haven't looked at the readings for next week yet, one of the readings for Monday is primarily about this question of audience and how it can be considered. But looking at the questions that people submitted for today as well, I think it's useful to step back for a second and name several of these kind of forces, personalities, elements that people sometimes don't always take into account when they're thinking about how exhibitions will come together and be received. And so there's an artist—in the case of an exhibition of living artists—there's a curator. Usually, there's an audience or visitors, and people sometimes prefer one or the other of those terms. And then there's an institution—and maybe we can stop there because certainly they're not the only forces. But I think about curatorial work, I just want to emphasize that I think for most curators today, they think of that much more expansively than a set of questions about what color the walls are, how food works during the show, what the labels say. "Interpretation" was another term that was used a lot in these questions, and I would say that at some museums, actually, the interpretation department is separate from the curatorial department. And sometimes it's not, especially in the smaller institutions. Then where it is separate, it's usually because the institution has more of an audience-centered vision. So they're actually taking the time to do some research to find out: Who is coming to the museum? Who's not coming to the museum that they'd like to invite in? How do people experience what they see in the museum? Can they make sense of what's on the wall? And those things are really different at different institutions. So I think it's just worth stepping back to frame that, to say that those conversations about how much impact each of those elements has on how the exhibition comes together is something that has changed a lot over time and varies a lot on the institution. This question that the visitor posed to you about how the institution can be transformed by a show—an interaction with an artist is one that I think people have paid more attention to in recent decades and some institutions have done a better job paying attention to. And this artist-centered way of thinking is one that exists in the world but sometimes I feel is too rare. But an institution that is really thinking through how they can engage seriously should also think about, not just what is this artist bringing to us, but how can we transform as well?

[Student Question: unclear]

Joel: I also want to clarify that question. You said you will be careful about presenting photographs about that particular ritual. You said you would be careful about having it in an exhibition. Is it the possibility of actually burning something in that space, or whether you would be hesitant to photograph that person doing that, and what the difference is between the two?

Sabelo: Sometimes you have to be a little sensitive. Sometimes, yes, it could be that. It's being sensitive in other situations. If people are mourning, for example, entering their space and then you're there with the camera. People really don't regard who they are photographing. Where is the line? Where does the photographer draw the line? And sometimes, yes, if you're coming from the outside people didn't really understand those kind of things, only when you are someone who's part of that community. But I think as a photographer there are moments where sometimes images are already existing, but I decided not to show the sensitivity around that. And also there are things like that where I wouldn't think about doing in this space because I know that they need to be sacred, they're not something that can be easily shown like that. What does it mean when you move something from that space and put it in the exhibition? And if you have a reason, the reasons are making sense, maybe for you. I mean, it goes to a point for me. And I think it's very important to mention that I'm not the only photographer, people like Andrew Tshabangu was a photographer. We had this kind of discussion before, I think. I mean, you can't tell if someone says I'm going to photograph this church because my mom is part of the church. Because if you go there because your mom is part of the church and you want to document the church, you have to make an effort to do research and know where to go, but I find that sometimes it's just not the case. When I first saw this, the image is like, how do you go to light a church and then you bring in studio lights? For me, it's like, all right, you want to create this amazing image, but I'm just thinking about a church, and then you have this to do while they're doing their things—bam, bam, bam—what is for me those kind of things like that. I don't use a flash light. Most of the time, I don't use a flash light so that you don't draw attention to yourself also. You don't want people to forget about what they're doing and start to focus on you. So for me: Is this how to step into spaces with sensitivity?

Joel: Interesting, because it feels like a two-part conversation to me: how to be sensitive enough in the space where you are making photographs, which is a sacred space. And then there's also this question to me of how much does the exhibition space transform, or start to suggest, or is there a possibility of that space becoming a kind of sacred space to some degree within the exhibition? Did you have that feeling at all with the show?

Sabelo: Yeah. I mean it's something that flows materially, something that is very sensitive to bring into this space, and also the sticks. Remember, if you just put it to the corner, like the way that I presented to the exhibition on Sunday, before you don't just go and take it, one person goes and takes the sticks, and then this sort of song that comes with that. And then around in every person at the time they are given their sticks by what is it but also start with the prayer. What does it mean to bring this? If I start to talk about my relationship with it, and why I decided to make it, then it makes it totally different. You can have that even in your own personal space. It's just one space where you can just do that if you feel like you want to. I took it on just for my personal space. That's why I'm thinking about the color, the blue and white, how to create a church-like space, a personal space where one goes to do their own conversation with the higher power.

Joel: There were a couple more hands up, but I also want to make sure we have enough time to talk about the exhibition upstairs. Is there anybody with a question that's burning?

Student Question: It has to do with sales of the work. You spend a lot of time with your relationships, collaborators. A lot of the work is very close to you, significantly so. Is there any tension when it comes to selling it?

Sabelo: To be able to continue making art, you need money. Something very problematic—what does it mean when you go to an informal settlement, for example? You take a photo of a family that is struggling. Then you put it in a gallery and sell it for maybe $5,000. How do you as an artist give back? I think being part of the church, somehow for me it closed that gap, because if I'm able to contribute to a church or anything, all right, I can contribute. And then there's the youth conference and they asked, "Sabelo, can you help us with something?" And it helped to erase a little bit of guilt. If the photograph is going to an institution, a respected institution, where the photograph is going to take a longer life, and it's very good—working with the gallery sometimes it's good because you know who you're selling to. I don't call it selling, I call it placing. I remember I told this collector that just because you paid, it doesn't mean you own them. You still don't own them, you're just keeping them for me. And with a gallery, the work goes to good institutions … I think some of them are in the Tate. So if it goes to good South African museums, then I think, for me, it's good. It happens all the time, it differs from one artist to another artist. You walk into a space where maybe five editions are sold. Look at the price, when their work becomes a commodity. Especially when the work is about activism, because then it goes to the gallery and becomes a commodity. Most of the time I don't photograph from outside myself, I photograph around my surroundings. Being able to participate beyond just the show and the money and other things with the community—I find it very problematic myself.

[Student Question: unclear]

Sabelo: I sold one photo so far. People responded to the work, but there was not much happening. But I remember this conversation about, "If you can take this photograph to New York and blow them up a bit and see the traffic." I was like, no, I don't want it big because of that. I don't know how to create this kind of traffic. At the moment I think there's no work at the point where I can say that if someone is really serious … because there are different collections that people are buying. It's very good also to do a little bit of research. It's not just buying to buy and sell. He started this collection collecting African photography, but also make the collection solid rather than just a bit and then back in situations like that you feel that the work is in the right hands. That is not someone that is going to buy it for $500 and sell it for $1,000. The fact that I don't deal with this directly, sometimes it's good. The gallery deals with that part. The time between five years where I was working alone, which was great because I felt like I was more intimate with my work. There was no gallery. But when I tried to sell my work by myself it was very difficult. Sometimes you bring people over and people would just refuse: "Sabelo, I can't pay $500 for just a photograph." But it's not just a photograph. There's so much that goes through it. But I'm not a salesperson, the gallery deals with that. They know who's who.

Joel: So I want to make sure to return to the question that you posed on the first day of class after we saw the exhibition. Do you want to pose it again directly as I'm going to try to reframe?

Student Question: I think the question was around the intentionality of the sash in an American context, especially, reading the little write-up on the card about it, representing violence in an American mind when you see a hanging rope versus in the African Zionist context.

Joel: I think you stated first that you had a certain reaction to it before you read the text, if I remember correctly. But then your question was actually about how much conversation would go into deciding the presentation of the rope and what went on the card. And I think to be transparent, that was the longest conversation we had, probably, and there were a couple of conversations. The other one was about this material. But yeah, I was just wondering if you want to talk a little bit about how you're thinking about this sash. So when we first talked about it, you were talking about a banner and I had something more in mind, having seen the banners from this exhibition, like what is presented. I was just wondering if maybe you want to start by talking a little bit about how you started to think about including that in the exhibition, what your intention was, and how that might have changed over the course of the process in which we were planning exhibitions, when we started talking about it, and the opening.

Sabelo: I was very clear from the beginning that I want to present the work as something very different from what I've presented before. So the rope was one of those things I wanted to include. I wanted to include it as a center of what we couldn't see. So sometimes the rope, you'll find it in a church, but I think there's this metaphor about it, once you present it in America it will translate into something else. I wanted to present the rope how I wanted to, but I also shifted it in this side. I want to make it longer and then make it invite us to be on the floor or something like that. That's where the conversation between us started, because I wanted to tie it in a certain way, but also now being aware that the rope can translate in a different way. So I wanted to push back a little bit, but not in an obvious way. Like you have to take a look at it and then go back after we had this long conversation together. But also, for me, the rope, not only that it's sort of related to this part but also sort of my personal relationship with the rope as something that is used at church, and then how it is presented in church. But also thinking about my personal healing and looking at this work as something that over time helped me deal with my own. Because I lost a friend. When we're talking about images to show and not to show with Gabi (Ngcobo). I went to the house and set up the camera, and somehow in that moment I made photographs. They didn't know what to do with the photograph. It was kind of like thinking about all these things. When we were first working around it and how to hold it because at first it resembled something that was left out hanging. We had discussions about politics of spaces and things like this. That's why we made it a little bit different. The healing sort of relates to America, but it's very personal to me. To someone else it can have a different meaning.

Christina Linden: Thank you so much for sharing that. Would it be okay if I talked a bit about the curatorial labels? The checklist for the show was due in March. I'd been in museums long enough to work around things. I described it as installation elements instead of loaned objects. This is important to know. But understand how a show like this has the potential to transform an institution. So I didn't know what the rope/sash would be until you arrived the week before we were opening the show. And I think after we installed, it was Joel who called me up who was feeling anxious about the work and the context. It's an example of the relationship between the institution and the curator and the artist and the audience. I advocate for an artist-centered approach, but it doesn't mean the curator and others can't engage in a conversation about how it's perceived, especially working in a particular context for thinking about and getting feedback from visitors about how they experienced things. Joel has a lot of students here, especially older students from African and African American communities. So I think that's an example of questions about how it will be received on campus. But also, it was a moment where I said, okay, we agreed early on not to do extended labels, which was something that I had to go through a process of advocating for within the museum, but that's not standard practice here. There's a desire for visitors to make their own meanings. But there are times when providing some context deepens engagement and also can be helpful in terms of clarifying intention. So we decided just the weekend before the show began, the Sunday before we all met you, that will be on the label card rather than on the wall because it was important to me. I've been in places where there are content warnings. But I felt like having it on the card, if somebody wanted more context. So that was a conversation between the three of us to decide about that. And then the other thing I want to add is that since you all saw the show, the night before, the director of the museum called me to have a conversation about it. And she felt that we were going to have that one label. We should have at least one more because it felt strange that there was only one. Since then, there's been a second description added and it's now a two-sided card.

Joel: [unclear] we were very much feeling the tension. You both really wanted to involve the audience …

Christina: What ended up on the label to me was important. Equally important was that we had the chance to have these conversations with Sabelo, which we hadn't really had the opportunity to talk about those things directly because we were planning remotely. Especially when there's a question about how something will be received, it's so important to have a conversation beforehand, so I don't have to speak on Sabelo's behalf or answer a question quickly.

Sabelo: Before reading the text, what did you think? What did you think about the balance?

Student: What you said about it being a surprise when you come around the corner, I felt that. I was so absorbed by all the photos on the wall and then you just turn and then I saw. It sort of felt like I didn't know that was going to be there. I think the first thing I noticed was the color, the red, I didn't think it was a violent piece. I tried to think what would be significant about it. So it wasn't until I read the card that I actually thought about the depth of the violence and the spirituality.

Sabelo: I shared with Christina that day, the rope is made of cotton wool… [unclear]

[Student Question: unclear]

Christina: I think where I could not have to have labels is maybe at a smaller institute of contemporary art where there's also always somebody present in the space to answer questions, even if it's just the one person who also monitors the front desk, which is another major difference. I would be certain that a major institution like the Whitney, a public institution that's not affiliated with the university, I think there would be labels. I worked for the longest as a curator at the Oakland Museum of California and my main complaint was just that they are so audience-focused that not only would there be labels, but there's a very strict word count to be short and they have to be written at a fourth-grade reading level. And this is generous to an audience that doesn't already come in as experts or feel like they can read a more academic style of writing. But it really felt sometimes so limiting in terms of being able to retain some autonomy for the artwork to speak on its own and also to be able to present more nuance. I remember once I was told I couldn't use the word "decolonial," and I ended up just insisting, but I had to define it. It depends a lot on the institution, that would be my take on that. The other two things we ended up talking a lot about during install was, one, I really wanted to have that photograph on the outside of the exhibition like on the wall when you come in for a couple of reasons. I felt like that photo by itself really has more of an impact. But I also felt like I wanted to be able to draw people into that space. I remember the first time I came here to work for an exhibition that was in that space. I came here to look specifically for the exhibition. I walked by it a few times before I could find it. So there were a few reasons that I sought permission last spring, and three times the week before install I was told no. So I really had to push and insist on that. And then the other was that Sabelo brought this photo album. We really wanted to include them, but we didn’t have a case that's the right size. Because there's not a guard in the space, because we couldn't afford to post a guard in the space all the time, because the work wasn't covered under our insurance policy. And because generally this is a museum that holds to accreditation standards that require things to be protected. We can't have work that's not in a tray or not behind glass. So there wasn't the right size of the tray available. For an exhibition planning process like this, I had to make a decision about which things I thought were most important to advocate for among other things I was getting pushback on. And so we were unable to include.

Sabelo: As an artist, you kind of push a little bit because, I mean, I didn't talk about these images. I just arrived with them. It's possible to build something like this, like within two or three days. And sometimes you just try your luck. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. And then it's like, all right, what to duplicate? What happened to flexibility? Plus I was thinking about how sometimes, for example, this work by [name], one of my favorite photographers, you know, she presents something, and then the show opens and she goes in to visit, and when she feels like she doesn't like a certain slide, she takes it out and puts in a new one. It comes with time. If you're an artist like that you can do things. And so I was like, all right, maybe it's going to happen, but, you know, we took this photograph. I came from Paris, I went back home and then I [unclear]. This is my first full group when I left my family church to join the new church, my new church, and this is a whole new story that can be included in the series. So I came back from this initial introspect and then I make some scans and I come back with them. But I'm glad that you made it through the conversation that we had, like, all right, I think for sure now, the time is really short and if you can't, like, it's impossible to include … But now thinking about how to include them in the next presentation, new prints or exhibition. So this is just the photographs mostly of me. There's at least two photographs. I was introduced to photography and I left my family church at almost the same time in 1997 or '98. I wasn't really interested in the church and not in my favorite church because I grew up in this church. And I was sort of feeling at that stage we prefer to go to soccer, or Sunday, go to church and you get punished after that. But after meeting the church, the Christian New Stone, and met them in the organization, actually a group of guys singing—the music was amazing. I was sitting outside and joined one of them who was in my class. One Monday I went to the class and I said, "I want to say you did such an amazing thing, you guys look clean and everything." And then I started going to practice and this photograph was my first Friday with them. Joining them with my new uniform and that's why I think already the time I was working as a photographer is like photography came first. I remember these shoes because I bought them. I was going to guess, based on the way I was dressed, that it was my twenty-first birthday. This is the guy I first met in class.