Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Keith Dietrich
Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2007
3 volumes
Edition: 5/14
National Museum of African Art, 2014-8-1
Keith Dietrich’s Fourteen Stations of the Cross is a reflection on and an examination of the topography of southern Africa as it relates to the history of mission stations that were established there as early as 1736. Dietrich achieves this through satellite imagery, detailed close-up photography, graphic design, and a series of essays.
Fourteen Stations of the Cross consists of three volumes contained in a black slipcase. Book One is devoted to essays that provide the context and history of the establishment of missionary stations across southern Africa. Book Two presents aerial photography and ground imagery coupled with names of individuals and dates associated with each mission station. Book Three is a photographic essay with extraordinary detailed images of ground leading to water.
The digital images in Books Two and Three are printed on Innova Smooth Cotton High White paper 220 gsm, a very heavy-weight paper. Heléne van Aswegen, bookbinder, illustrator and artist in the Department of Visual Arts, Stellenbosch University, and the late Arthur Wadman, master bookbinder and restorer with Stellenbosch University, were instrumental in the production of Dietrich’s artist’s book.
Stabat Mater
The visual/verbal leitmotif through all three volumes is excerpts from the Stabat Mater printed in red ink on black paper. Stabat Mater Dolorosa (The Mother stood sorrowing) is a thirteenth-century Roman Catholic lamentation by Mother Mary on the suffering and death of her son Jesus. Of the twenty-verse lamentation, the first four are used in Book One, the next fourteen are inscribed in Book Two, and the last two complete the set in Book Three. Dietrich’s use of the Stabat Mater and the choice of title for the publication are also a lamentation on the cruelties inflicted by early immigrants and colonials on indigenous peoples of southern Africa and the attempts of missionaries to bring “enlightenment” to a “dark continent.”
This three-volume artist’s work is not one that can be perused quickly by flipping through the pages. The photographic essays in Books Two and Three draw the viewer into detailed inspection of landscape, geography, ground, and water, while leading one to contemplate the profundity of the histories that are presented in Book One. The viewer’s experience in each emerging chapter, especially in Book Two, is a sense of anticipation, awe, and meditation as the images and minimal text reveal themselves. Fourteen Stations of the Cross is a work that integrates Dietrich’s artistic vision with the diverse and complex histories and cultures of southern Africa.
Book One, a traditional codex, contains a foreword by Dietrich, an introduction by art historian Lize van Robbroeck, and an essay by Dietrich, “Early Mission Enterprise in South Africa,” which identifies the key historical figures involved in the establishment of early missions during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. These essays provide the interpretive and historical background for Dietrich’s visual documentation through digital photography that appears in the second and third volumes.
Rivers of Blood
Book Two, the largest of the three volumes, consists of fourteen chapters devoted to these fourteen missions established in southern Africa from 1736 to 1813 by various European mission societies, including the London Missionary Society and the Moravian Mission Society. Dietrich’s title, referring to the fourteen prayer stations in the Roman Catholic Church, makes no direct correspondence to the fourteen mission stations mapped in this work.
Each station is visually represented in three ways. First, Dietrich presents a satellite image of the topography taken from 8½ miles (12 km.) above the earth.
Superimposed on this double-page satellite image is a circular maze, a small section of which is printed in red.
As one leafs through other chapters, the red portion of the maze gets larger, symbolically mapping the increase in mission stations over the years. Secondly, Dietrich includes extreme close-ups of ground, detailing grasses, sand, and even occasionally indications of human presence.
The ground images are a continuous photograph laid out in gatefolds through each section. Thirdly, in the final gatefold, Dietrich superimposes a church window reflection onto a large circular basin, giving the illusion of a baptismal font.
The gatefolds with the baptismal fonts are imprinted in red on black with the names of individuals who were baptized and those who founded the mission. Each of the fourteen chapters begins with black gatefolded pages inscribed in red ink of a verse from the devotional hymn Stabat Mater. As Van Robbroeck states in her introduction in Book One, the red script runs through “like a river of blood.”
The complexity of the structure of Book Two mirrors the complexities of the historical content. Each “station” consists of multiple gatefolds, first presenting an aerial photograph (distance or history), then to close-ups of the ground (the present) and a reflection of a church window in water (contemplation and redemption). These multiple gatefolds require the viewer to carefully unfold and refold the heavy weight paper back to its folded state in order to proceed to the next gatefolded set of images, a slow, deliberate, and meditative process. Each section or chapter requiring unfolding and refolding can be taken as a metaphoric act of contemplation to reconcile the past with the present.
Baptism in the River
Book Three continues the photographic journey begun in Book Two. It is an accordion folded volume stretching out nine meters (29.6 feet) of a continuous close-up image of sand, grasses, what appear to be footprints and tire marks, and ending with water and its light reflections.
These photographs were taken at Teewaterskloof across the Franschhoek Pass near Stellenbosch. Dietrich positioned his camera one meter above ground and progressively moved toward the water photographing continuous sections until he arrived at the water. [1]
Dietrich explains the inspiration for Book Three and the process of taking the photography like this:
The idea for Book 3 was strongly influenced by the scene in the Film O Brother, Where Art Thou where a group of African Americans walk down to the lake to baptise. . . The sound track of that scene, Down in the River to Pray by Alison Krauss, was one of those rare riveting and touching moments that one can ever experience. I needed a third volume to accommodate the two last verses of the Stabat Mater, and as I was dealing with water, earth and baptism, I decided I needed a river. . . . I measured out about seventeen metres “pathway” leading into the water to get the nine-metres of photograph. . . . I stood in the water up to my thighs with my tripod to get the last photograph. When I page through Book Three I always hear Alison Krauss’ song. [2]
Again printed in red ink on black, Book Three opens with the next-to-last verse of the Stabat Mater and ends with the last verse:
When my body dies,
let my soul be given
the glory of paradise. Amen
As the verse implies, Dietrich’s visual journey from land to water is like a final baptism, a salvation from the difficult path of the land’s history. The last page of the accordion fold is tucked into a pocket of the book’s cover.=
About the Artist
Keith Dietrich (born 1950) was educated in South Africa and Belgium. He received a BA in visual arts from Stellenbosch University in 1974 with a concentration in graphic design. In 1976 and 1977 he studied painting in Belgium. From the University of South Africa he received a MA in fine arts and a PhD in art history in 1983 and 1993, respectively. His diverse artistic endeavors include drawing, graphic design, printmaking, painting (landscape and portraiture), and book arts. His academic pursuits, although not divorced from his artistic pursuits, have involved historical investigations of southern Africa’s colonial illustrators and South Africa’s diverse and complex immigration and colonial histories. These lines of research have resulted in a number of other artists’ books by Dietrich, such as Horizons of Babel (2007); Many Rivers to Cross: Conflict Zones, Boundaries and Shared Waters (2011); and Fragile Histories: Fugitive Lives, Justice and Injustice at the Cape 1700–1800 (2012), based on the histories of the punishments meted out to indigenous and immigrant populations at the Cape of Good Hope. Dietrich is currently professor and director of the Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts (CCIBA) at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Bibliography
Elbourne, Elizabeth, and Robert Ross. “Combating Spiritual and Social Bondage: Early Missions in the Cape Colony.” In Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History, edited by Richard Elphhick and Rodney Davenport, pages 31-67. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.
Saunders, Christopher, and Nicholas Southey. Historical Dictionary of South Africa. 2nd edition. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000.
