The Container

Billy Monk was a chancer. He was a restauranteur, a model, a crayfish poacher, smuggler, petty criminal, diamond diver, and for a short while, a bouncer at Cape Town’s notorious underground nightclub The Catacombs. If there was a quick buck to be made, Monk would be there. He was a man to be reckoned with, or totally avoided, and it seems that everyone knew him, or of him, or had a good story to tell about him. He was also a man of many stories himself, captivating his audiences with charming tales and poetic anecdotes. He was the man that everyone loved, or hated, knew all or nothing about (even his actual birth date is not confirmed, as he smoothly avoided talking about his childhood).

His career as a photographer, like everything else in his life, was seemingly nothing more than a coincidence. Bored of his work as a bouncer at The Catacombs, to the relief of the club owner, who describes him as a “bad bouncer”, Monk armed himself with a Pentax camera, 35mm film and a little technical experience from his stint as a photographer’s assistant, to photograph bacchants at the nightclub so he could sell the photographs as mementos. But like in all good tales, nothing is really a coincidence—Monk possessed an undeniable ability to capture the revelers with intimacy and allure, producing evocative images full of seductiveness, joy and charisma.

Monk’s technical skills proved to be quite impressive. Despite taking the photographs in less than ideal conditions—in dark environments with nothing more than a small hand-flash and without a tripod—he still managed to produce sensitive photographs rich in depth and with complex and sophisticated compositions. More than that, as is most evident in his photographs, is the intimate and natural relationship he forged with his subjects. It is clear Monk was part of each and every photograph he took and not just an outsider who is documenting. The subjects seem comfortable, joyful and celebrating freedom, without a sign of exploitation or contrivance. They are happy to be photographed by Monk, and are as active participants in the process as the photographer himself.

The images are profound both for their aesthetic value and for their context. In The Photobook: A History, Volume III, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger observe in their introduction about Monk’s work that his photographs share in their grittiness, roughness and portrayal of marginal characters a similar feel with the black and white photographs of the Japanese iconic photographer Daidō Moriyama. Both photographers possess a mutual visual artistic taste with an additional common interest in documenting subcultures, and in directing the focus on the socially fractional and disjointed nature that typifies modern life. Monk’s revealing photographs are perhaps the only images we have of apartheid-era’s everyday life that boast in addition to mere documentation also a significant artistic value. They are as important historically as they are aesthetically and artistically.

While Monk did not market himself as a professional photographer or as an artist, he did have an inkling of the quality and integrity of his photographs. “You’ll see,” he said to a friend, “I’ll make it in photography. They’ll be talking about my photographs long after I’ve gone.” He was not wrong, but it would take another decade before the photographs were to be rediscovered by the photographer Jac de Villiers, after he moved into a studio where Monk left his photographs, negatives, and meticulous notes for safekeeping with a photographer friend. By then, Monk’s photography aspirations were long gone, and he had moved on, as he would, to forge a relatively successful and lucrative career as a diamond diver.

With the help of the late South African photographers Andrew Meintjes and David Goldblatt, Jac de Villiers mounted the first exhibition of Billy Monk’s photographs at the Market Gallery in Johannesburg in 1982. The exhibition was well received by both critics and public, and was highly praised. Monk, unaware of the acclaim his photographs achieved, but excited nonetheless to have them exhibited, did not make the opening night, but he purchased a new suit and headed to Johannesburg a couple of weeks later to see the exhibition. However, Monk’s life was never short of surprises and twists, and sadly, on his way to the gallery he had an altercation with another man, while trying to protect a friend, and was shot dead. He was murdered at point-blank range and never made it to the exhibition.

Since, Billy Monk’s works from his short spell as a photographer between 1967-1969, taking photographs at The Catacombs, did reach international acclaim and stature in photography history. His work was exhibited at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and at the International Center of Photography in New York. The Iziko National Gallery, SFMoMA, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery also added Monk’s photographs to their permanent collections, while a number of books and dozens of published articles cite Monk’s works and their significance. Recently, Monk’s photographs also started to make appearances in international art fairs, to a warm reception, and a newly produced documentary about his life, “Billy Monk – Shot in the Dark”, has just been released (2019) and has featured at a number of international film festivals.

Defiance and Decadence Under Apartheid, the exhibition of Billy Monk at The Container, launches for the first time the photographer’s works in Asia (we have featured the same exhibition also in Hong Kong, with our partners Boogie Woogie Photography). The selection of photographs for this exhibition is unique: some are from the original series presented in 1982 at the Market Gallery, some are from a newer series shown in 2019 by the Billy Monk Collection, and some, are showcased for the very first time—images that have never been exhibited before anywhere in the world.

The selection is tailored specifically to Asian audiences and introduces also some images of Japanese and Hong Kongese sailors and Asian tourists who frequented the port of Cape Town, that give insight to the varied and multifarious crowd at The Catacombs. It is a rare opportunity to see what real-life subculture looked like in South Africa during the apartheid era, where individuals were restricted not only for their skin colour, but also for affiliation with other unpopular social groups, such as gays, transgender women, prostitutes, and late night revelers. In Monk’s photographs we can find them all—rubbing shoulders with one another and creating a permissive social bubble, where everything is acceptable and everyone is welcome. It is perhaps ironic to identify in the clutter and disarray the archetypical Japanese salarymen, suited and booted, taking to a bit of late night karaoke, in an embrace with local women, or just passed out on a bench, as if it were the last train on the Yamanote line.

Defiance and Decadence Under Apartheid offers a glimpse of moments of happiness under oppression, and teaches us what we know already—that human spirit, love and acceptance are stronger than any discriminatory rules or restrictions imposed by any governing authorities.