The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Equally performative, if not more so, was the second Fischer image of Tabata that has
survived, one dated to 1941, the year before Tabata entered Fischer’s studio. It was
incorporated into the I.B. Tabata Collection, as part of the body of evidence of the
political life of a political leader. This Fischer photograph had a different aesthetic and
was far more personal. Seemingly created outside the studio in the intimate space of the
home, Tabata was photographed without a jacket, with his shirt open to reveal his chest.
His spectacles were removed and his gaze lowered, making him seem introspective and
vulnerable. Unlike Fischer’s studio image, the lighting here was natural, revealing facial
blemishes and marks where spectacles had been. The effect was a nakedness of self, and
a sense of intimacy, sensuality and complexity. As a consequence, Tabata’s masculinity
was subdued, creating simultaneously a sense of feminisation (Figure 7). As the work of
a professional artist, the photograph had an aesthetic element that was simultaneously
modern and intensely private. This image would certainly have been absolutely
inappropriate for the needs of Mnguni and Inyaniso, and their desire for a ready‐made
leader. It was also hardly the image of leadership wanted for the ADC campaign.
Indeed, its almost incongruous incorporation into the Tabata Collection owed much to
Dora Taylor, for whom this photograph must have had significant personal meaning.
While the visual record of I.B. Tabata during the 1940s and early 1950s had been framed
within collective leadership, or marked by photographic aversion or aestheticised
modernism, the visual register of Tabata from the mid‐1960s was of one who had
embraced the conventions of portraiture and the visual construction and projection of
leadership wholeheartedly. This marked a significant shift from the previous, almost
principled biographic disavowal and dislike of photographers. Instead, Tabata became
habituated to the camera. In 1965, when the ADC in New York needed portraits of
Tabata as part of its preparation of publicity materials for his tour of the United States,
one of the photographs that Taylor sent from Toronto was the 23‐year‐old Anne Fischer
studio portrait of the youthful Tabata. 52 However, the projection of a southern African
liberation movement required the credible visual depiction and projection of a leader. A
52 There are two pamphlets with this Fischer image in the ADC Collection. See footnote 129 above.
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