Crossings

In South Africa, a country with one of the world’s highest levels of social inequality and a rapidly growing youth population, the daily journey to and from school can carry significant physical and psychological challenges for many young people.

Crossings explores the complex environments they navigate—spaces where vulnerability, danger, friendship and freedom coexist. The resulting book is also dynamic and playful, bringing together analogue photography and a range of processes to examine and explore the formative experience of adolescence, and the ways in which place, relationships and memory shape who we become.

Following an initial residency with A4 Arts Foundation in 2023, Pannack began working with local youth clubs, schools and NGOs across the Cape Flats in Cape Town. Through workshops using lo-fi analogue photography, painting and creative writing, she created an accessible space for young people to reflect on their experiences and their journeys through and with their communities each day. The images made in collaboration with the young people also form an important part of the book.

"Making our way home from school is a simple, nostalgic, universal activity. This daily commute has its own set of challenges in South Africa- a country with the greatest social divide. This daily ritual is a crossing, a tightrope walk through streets where invisible lines divide safety from danger, past from future, life from death. Through drawing, photography, collage, and cyanotypes. Cameras change hands, and perspectives shift; new truths are unveiled."—Laura Pannack