DUT Journalism hosts the ‘Attached to the Soil Project’ Photo Exhibition

exhibitions

Professor Peter Glendenning from Michigan State University engaging with FoAD’s Executive Dean, Professor Runette Kruger during the opening of the exhibition.

DUT Journalism hosts the ‘Attached to the Soil Project’ Photo Exhibition

SIMANGELE ZUMA

The Journalism Programme under the Faculty of Arts and Design at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) hosted a four-day exhibition titled, Attached to the Soil Project Photo Exhibition at the City Campus. The exhibition ran from 5 to 8 September 2022.

The event featured Professor Peter Glendinning from the Department of Art, History and Design at Michigan State University. He visited DUT to exhibit the photographic collaborations he engaged in with various Higher Education Institutions in South Africa, including DUT’s Journalism students during the Attached to the Soil Project in 2019. The long-awaited exhibition was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In her welcoming remarks, Professor Runette Kruger, the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Design at DUT said the exhibition is an outcome of the ‘Attached to the Soil Project’ started by Prof Glendinning in 2019 commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the inauguration of Nelson Mandela. She indicated that at the time Prof Glendinning was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa.

“What we see today is the outcome of the Attached to the Soil – project started 2019 commemorating 25th anniversary of the inauguration of President Mandela, when Prof Glendinning was a Fulbright Scholar in SA. This exhibition is a continuation of this first iteration, after the dent that the pandemic made in international projects, globally. The long walk to get here from 2019 was fortunately not as long as that undertaken by our former president,” said Prof Kruger. She continued to explain that the goal of the project was to encourage students to “create their own Attached to the Soil projects, and gain experience in creative problem solving in terms of (1) expressing an aspirational message through a soil-related metaphor; (2) engaging in history from a dialogic perspective – i.e. capturing history and social experience through intergenerational conversation; (3) creating a photograph expressing the metaphor and conversation.”

Prof Glendinning expressed he was proud of the DUT students’ participation and their remarkable contribution on this project. He commended the DUT Journalism Department team, especially Mrs Deseni Soobben for encouraging the students to give of their best on this project.

“This work has been under wraps for three years because of the pandemic. I am so happy that it can now be shared with the rest of South Africa and the world. The essence of the projects and their essential foundation is within the words of the young people like Blessing and others from this institution and elsewhere. It is the stories of ordinary, everyday people whose lives are really the essence of the work. You have the intersection of a young person who has aspirations, who has reflections of the past, reflections on the present, reflections and hopes for the future that are symbolised within their beautiful soil related metaphors,” explained Prof Glendinning.