The Ghost of the Grand Parade

A Lost Encounter from 1973

Fifty-three years ago, in the brilliant, harsh light of a Cape Town afternoon, I captured this quiet moment on the Grand Parade. Even then, in 1973, the scene felt like a sudden tear in the fabric of time. Amidst the roar of diesel buses, the shouts of the fruit sellers, and the relentless Cape Town wind, this street photographer stood as a silent, solitary monument to a vanishing world. He was one of the last of his kind—an itinerant craftsman practicing a magic trick that was already nearly a century old.

Around the world, these nomadic tradesmen went by many names: they were minuteros (minute-photographers) in Spain and Latin America, kamra-e-faoree (instant camera) in the bustling markets of Afghanistan, smudgers on the streets of London, or simply street box photographers. Here on the Grand Parade, he was a local legend. Shortly after I pressed the shutter on my camera, he and his colorful wooden setup disappeared from the Parade forever. I never saw him again.

What you are looking at is not just a makeshift stall; it is an entirely self-contained photographic universe. The red box sitting on the wheeled tripod on the left is a magnificent piece of DIY engineering. It is a street box camera, a device that served as both the camera and the chemical darkroom. The photographer would seat his subjects in the simple wooden chair just behind the tripod. Using sheets of photographic paper instead of film, he would expose the paper, and then, working entirely by touch, insert his arm through the black fabric sleeve hanging from the side of the box. Inside, in tiny, shallow trays of developer and fixer, he would develop the paper negative in the pitch black. To make a positive print for the customer, he would stick the wet negative to a wire rod in front of the lens, photograph it again, and repeat the darkroom process inside the box. Within minutes, the customer would walk away with a damp, unique portrait.

To the right stands his mobile headquarters—a heavy, wooden booth painted a deep, faded purple. The glass-fronted cabinet facing the public was his gallery, displaying a grid of sample portraits. These tiny, black-and-white squares showed the smiling faces of everyday Capetonians, perhaps embellished with a stamped border reading "Souvenir of Cape Town" or superimposed over a decorative postcard backdrop. In my photograph, the photographer, wearing a dark fedora and a waistcoat, is leaning deep into the booth. Perhaps he was cutting fresh paper, mixing developer chemicals, or mounting a dry print for a waiting customer, shielding his delicate materials from the brilliant South African sun.

My great regret from that day is a simple one: I never had my own picture taken by this marvelous contraption. Like so many of us when we were young, I was content to play the role of the silent observer, documenting the world from behind my own lens rather than stepping into the frame. I suppose I assumed he would always be there, a permanent fixture of the Grand Parade’s rich daily tapestry. But technology marches on, and the convenience of coin-operated automatic photo booths and cheap personal pocket cameras quickly swept this handmade craft into obsolescence.

Today, this photograph remains a precious window into a gentler, slower era of Cape Town's street life. It is a tribute to a proud, self-reliant street trader who spent his days capturing the memories of thousands of ordinary people, only to slip quietly into the shadows of history himself. I often wonder whose faces were displayed in that glass cabinet on that windy day in 1973, and where those damp paper portraits are now.