Page 18 - Bulletin 7 2003

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in an era of candid photography. His own patience in waiting for the correct light
must have been equalled by that with which he made his ‘sitters’ obey his indications

– not to mention the ‘sitters’ own patience. His little friends may have been carefully
trained for the purpose, but what must have been the local residents and farm

workers often appear equally relaxed.

But it is not only the light, nor the human element, that make Elliott’s best

architectural photographs what they are. Unrivalled is the way in which his camera
conveyed that delicate balance between picturesque dilapidation and unselfconscious

prosperity that used to characterise Cape domestic architecture. There was a rare
rapport between the photographer and his subject, all the more remarkable for his

probably limited cultural background. Remarkable, too, is the fact that many of

Elliott’s best shots, those in which these qualities are most evident, date from the first
ten years of his career as a photographer. He never really produced better work than

photographs like the distant view of Steenveld, the view of Krommerivier with bare

trees in front, the beautiful studies of the back of Ida’s Valley, the dovecot at
Meerlust or the front of Burgundy with its delightful cameo of farm life enacted on

the stoep, all photographs exhibited as early as 1913. If among the many equally
lovely shots he took during the twenties and thirties there seems to be a more

frequent occurrence of indifferent ones, this may well have been the result of the
gradual disappearance of the original character of much of the architecture itself.

For all Elliott’s shortcomings as a recorder of history, it is in the way in which he
captured this character that he gave to South Africa a monument to its old

architecture more permanent than the architecture itself.

A century’s loss

To the people living at the Cape a century and a half ago, the architecture of their

towns, villages and farms must have seemed pretty straightforward. Apart from a few
public buildings or private mansions, designed by architects and adorned by

sculptors, building at the Cape was very functional and uniform. Joinery, material,