Weekend Portfolio: Johno Mellish

Images and Text by Johno Mellish

My pictures are mostly depictions of people who I have come across in South Africa - some are my friends, some are strangers, others actors and all collaborators. I am interested in conversation and the possibilities for photography therein.

In establishing the view, or the shot, a place for play is marked out by collaborators and myself, where spontaneity is the ordering principle. I like the idea of play as a strategy or foil to the power-politics of lens based image making.

My pictures are exercises in mimicry or transferral - experiments in finding means and modes for the transportation / translation of values, ideas, stories, histories and narratives across time - in short ossifications / setting of abstractions. But mostly they're pictures.

These works have no claim beyond them being pictures. I'm not so much interested in reportage, documentary or record-making but I am interested in the economy of pictures and what trading with pictures means at a very human level.

More of Johno Mellish’s work can be found on his website and Instagram.