“Life is the binding and connecting way….if you are alive, you are connected to everything that one has around us and that oneness is the land…the land owns us.” - Bob Randall, Aboriginal elder

“Our belief is that land is a gift from God and from our ancestors who have not left us. We continue to see ourselves as stewards of God’s resources, especially of communally owned land.” - Z. Nkosi, Spirituality, Land and Land reform in South Africa

Land remains one of the most political and contested elements of South Africa’s past and present. From the first encounters between indigenous inhabitants to later colonialists, segregationists and the more recent democrats, land has been used to divide the country and her people. But it has also drawn her people closer to her, enfolding them in a very sacred embrace. - Karen Leigh Harris, PhD Department of Historical and Heritage Studies University of Pretoria

For ten years (1996 -2006) I photographed religious rituals and spiritual practice around Durban and other parts of the country. These included Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Islamic faiths, African rituals linked to ancestral veneration and the New Age movement. Along the way I encountered unexpected commonalities. Trance states crossed over African, Hindu and Islamic traditions.

Two main tributaries led to the spiritual river I was paddling on. The one was my long-standing connection with indigenous people in southern Africa, and the other was a period of deep personal crisis. These energies, one in the outer world, the other within, danced in my psyche, but as I was to learn they were intrinsically linked.

My journey with first peoples had taught me, that the world within (the spiritual realm) and the material world were in a constant state of dialogue. They are not separated but part of one’s daily life. Ancestor veneration is a continuum, a search for answers – disasters and calamities can be explained. Making contact with the spirit world is not only to search for answers but also for the affirmation of positive forces. Spiritual practices, I observed, were far from one-dimensional. They were shaped by the past – colonialism, slavery, underdevelopment and apartheid. Influenced by the present – poverty, marginalisation, globalisation, and the ever-growing technological communication revolution prevalent throughout the developing worlds. The dance between past and present opens up a mass of possibilities, movements , complexities and assimilations.

The other tributary to the spiritual river, was immensely personal. I was experiencing a dark period of depression. What I was to discover was that mystics and healers see discordance, disharmony and mental disturbance simply as functions of a journey to enlightenment. To discover this was a great relief.

My approach was to allow the camera to narrate the moving spirit and healing running through the region. I too, with or without my camera, was and still am part of a country trying to heal itself. In this journey I joined millions of South Africans on a pilgrimage beyond politics and platitudes ... in search of a transcendent spirit. In my travels, I observed how colonial and African, ancient and modern, eastern and western, first and third worlds, gazed and interacted with each other. At the highest level of spiritual practice I saw there were no divisions of colour, gender, class or form of worship – there is simply a common language and an open road. I have been humbled by the many doors that opened for me. I have been privileged to walk up holy mountains, to kneel before God in places of worship, to be blessed by many priests, to pray and be prayed for. I held the talking stick and the traditional staff that represents ‘healing and not killing’. I was immersed in all that is held sacred by a diversity of people and practices. For this, I am immensely grateful.

My journey with first peoples had taught me, that the world within (the spiritual realm) and the material world were in a constant state of dialogue. They are not separated but part of one’s daily life. Ancestor veneration is a continuum, a search for answers – disasters and calamities can be explained. - Paul Weinberg

EarthSongs explores and celebrates spiritual connections to the land in South Africa. While the ownership of “land” in this country is a highly contested issue, people have long marked and celebrated their spiritual connections to the land in ways that signify and re-imagine what it means for a variety of its inhabitants. Such meaning-making often etches the landscape, turning it into a natural canvass through which layered stories, manifest or buried, are expressed.

Weinberg has traversed the breadth of the South African landscape to portray its deep and intrinsic meaning and encapsulate the inter-connections of cultures and peoples across the spectrum of time. He traces these intersections from the first peoples, the San and Khoi, whose domain this land was for centuries, to those who came from elsewhere on the continent and from across the seas. In quiet ways beyond the news and headlines, people of all traditions, persuasions, faiths and spiritual engagements partake in formal and informal rituals that mark the land in ways that align with their beliefs. They may go on pilgrimages, or re-ritualise places of archaeological, historical and cultural significance. Such rituals may take place in makeshift places of worship, in caves, next to rivers, or in churches, temples and mosques.

Associate Professor Hlonipha Mokoena, will open the exhibition, and writes in the introduction to the book, “Paul Weinberg’s photographs reflect our human desire for sanctuary. When the eye meets the stillness of a river estuary, or the isolation of a San rock painting, or the pantheon of deities decorating a Hindu temple, it is not “god” that comes to mind but the image of the believer, the faithful, the acolyte who comes to this place to seek the soothing balm of absolution. The places that Weinberg photographs have not necessarily been consecrated by an organised body — priests, imams, rabbis, izangoma; they are places that history itself has chosen as relics; wailing walls, kramats, amaliba (graves in isiZulu), groves, caves and hills. This assortment is a testament to how broad the spirit ranges in search of divinity; it is an affirmation of the psychological thirst for a higher being who intercedes in our mundane and not-so-mundane human affairs.”

In some instances, these spiritual sites are well-known, like Mount Nhlangakazi, the endpoint of a 50 km pilgrimage for thousands of followers of the Ibanda lamaNazaretha (Shembe Church). In others, as in the case of Twee Rivieren, where a small statue at the confluence of the Swart and Liesbeek rivers in Cape Town pays homage to the brave Goringhaiqua Khoi who defeated the first colonisers in 1510, these sites are less known. The lesser-known sites often tell stories of contest and simultaneous spiritual significance that need to be told more volubly and heard more widely.

His moving imagery harnesses the spiritual rituals of a cross-section of southern Africa’s belief systems – indigenous, Muslim, Jewish, African Zionist, Roman Catholic, Buddhist and more. As you encounter these visuals, you will have the unique opportunity to gaze differently, and with deference, at the world we inhabit.

This project complements and expands on the extensive book he did on rituals and spiritual practice called Moving Spirit (1996–2006). EarthSongs eloquently draws together the ethereal or intangible realm of belief and ritual with the very tangible soil that makes up our landscape. As the title indicates, it chants the songs of the people who inhabit this southern stretch of African earth.