‘My Day With’ is a praise song to Coincidence and the beautiful fruits growing right in front of our eyes, but that we often don’t see, stuck in our everyday life and preoccupations. It is first, a way of celebrating the people of Cape Town: not only people that I heard of or that I already know who inspire me with their work, passion or actions, but also “random” people or rather, people that I meet randomly and that you too could have met.

It is then, a tiny tribute to this city, the Mother City, which has so many diverse and hidden fruits that it might well be called the hanging gardens of Babylon. After photographing it on the surface, following my random paths, I will now try to go a bit deeper by meeting and beginning to know the people I used to just shoot and leave there.

Not forgetting histories of representation and the power afforded to the one behind the camera, I cannot say that I am allowing people to tell their stories – “giving voice to the voiceless” as white liberals would like to call it (besides, MDW features people who occupy varying rungs in the societal/power hierarchy). Rather, I seek to see their lives in relation to my own, as two human beings connecting.

The medias are various, as I believe such work should touch all our senses and intimacies. I will record and take pictures, I will shoot video and write. Every week, I’ll be releasing a new portrait.

These are my first steps in documentary, but I am sure I’ll be able to capture something that is worth your attention, dear reader, because I believe we are all curious of our fellow beings: the internal universe of the man on the street that gently brushes up against our own, with a glance or a bump in the crowd, as we rush to the rhythms of our humdrum lives. Sometimes, we are swallowed by fears of the different, of the unknown, or just let ourselves slip, so easily, beneath the blanket of apathy. But, we should take that second to stop and wonder.

Your life, Their lives.

And I believe in this project, because Cape Town is the strangest, most impassionating city in which I have ever had the occasion to live.

The human story is here, ripe for our discovery.

Bony X Catherine

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