Without knowing it, we are all familiar with places in Cape Town. The reason for this is that the global advertising industry likes to produce its campaigns for cars and mobile phones at Africa’s southern tip when it’s wintertime in Europe. With his “Cape Town 2010” images,
Darius Ramazani gives us insights into the city before it played host to the football worldcup that year.

The Berlin photographer has purposely moved away from the common production style with his pictures. He didn’t set out with his camera at the height of summer, but in autumn or winter when it was raining and cooler.

When the sun isn’t blazing as usual, the fields aren’t a lush green and the sky is pale and grey instead of blue. We see the city behind the glossy advertising productions.

Ramazani’s images possess a melancholy that we have never seen from Cape Town before, as the photographer does not just limit the touching sadness of his documentation to the townships alone. The often-pictured city centre and the promenade by the sea seem to be deserted, there isn’t a single soul on the streets, nobody is swimming in the public pools and there is an emptiness, which makes you stop and think. What is the true face of Cape Town? Why doesn’t equality between white and black prevail here? Will the World Cup change anything?

© Darius Ramazani Photography / darius@ramazani.com / www.ramazani.com / Site by Uli Schöberl