Description

Rui Camilo’s photo project ‘34 Hours’ suggests time in its very title. In 2009, 34 hours is what he had to document the journey of a delegation led by Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the then German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. On the morning of August 6th that year, Camilo landed in Johannesburg, South Africa 34 hours later, he took off again. The period between was jam-packed with appointments at non-governmental organisations and at aid projects for disabled children and orphans. There was also a trip to a township, a visit to the German embassy and much more. It was a tight schedule – one that is depicted in this book in the form of a timeline which accompanies the photographs throughout. Rui Camilo says: ‘You have to let go of expectations and of preconceived ideas about how a reportage or image series is meant to go. As a result a vacuum arises, a state of timelessness, which can then be filled.’ It was from such a state of timelessness that this book has emerged – a book without preliminary conceptual work but in which every shot fits together to form a conclusive whole. And it is perhaps precisely because of the absence of preconceptions, that an exceedingly free, intense group of works has been achieved.