Stephen Hobbs presents on Saturday the 4 October the exhibition ”M23 70 (2003) Photographic extracts from the Mirage City” at PhotoZa, Johannesburg. The event marks 10 years of production of the artist – the title referencing his first solo show at the Market Theater Gallery ten years ago. However, a lot has happened in Joburg since then...

There is nothing new about orientation as a subject of artistic production. Without exaggerating one could say that artists have always been occupied with how we move around in the world. The act of orientation naturally implies the fundamental questions – who are we? And – where do we come from? As a child of the modern city, Hobbs has made of the ever present reflection a tool to understand – and search for orientation - his own and the city’s. Of course, orientation is not just about which direction to chose to go to work. Or which sidewalk to pick to stay clear of undesired company. Orientation is the act with which we locate our selves in the world, mirrored as we are in the things and people around us. With his insistent documentation of people’s and the city’s reflections, Hobbs convinces us about the importance of orientation, of seeing and of projecting oneself onto the surroundings in order to be reflected, to exist.

Hand in hand with modernity came the modern, strangely disconnected subject. And with the rise of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis as a method to understand the many depths and complexities of the self, older times’ mental anchor points in mythology and religion rapidly declined. However, as a result of the division between ”conscious” and ”subconscious”, the modern subject began to perceive their physical environment as defined by this same kind of split or duality. The clean, visible surface had a backside to it, something hidden and secret, an echo of people’s inner fears and anxieties. Freud, himself, described the phenomenon in ”The Uncanny”, Franz Kafka painted a frightening literary image of it in ”The Castle” and Italo Calvino wrote poetry about it in ”Invisible Cities”.

The opposite of orientation is lack of direction, which in literature is the same as loss of self or self-alienation. In his search for the other side of the visible, Stephen Hobbs has increasingly erased himself from the images. In fact, there are rarely any human figures in his works – except, precisely, when they emerge as their own reflections, as in the ”Vein Flows” series (Basel, 2002). Holding up his camera as a magnifying glass, Hobbs captures and enlarges those moments of emergence and reflection. In the most classical photographic way, he pursues light’s play on the city’s surfaces, and on his way discovers innumerable new spaces, dimensions and facets of the visible. With this very formal, but most poetic approach, Hobbs reveals the layers of the invisible. In his images the city’s surfaces assume endless depths and possibilities of self-reflection, of human orientation...

”M23 70 (2003)” rediscovers the silent language of the city and connects Johannesburg with other urban centres. Hobbs does not deny or avoid the recent, traumatic past of the place. Rather, his project is thoroughly modern. The artist’s photographic extracts from the Mirage City force the spectator to look for themselves in the cool structure of things, to merge with – and become part of the place, which coincidently happens to be their physical home. However, this is not an easy task. The modern city is a treacherous labyrinth full of blind corridors, and there are so many surfaces! The heterogeneity of Hobbs’ production witnesses the plurality. Johannesburg rose so quickly from the ground, and one may be right in suspecting it to be able to vanish just as fast as it came. But for the moment it is here. And if we are to trust the gentle guidance of Mr. Hobbs – it will probably also be here tomorrow and the day after.