Looking west from the Hill Top Complex, Great Zimbabwe, 2014 Photograph

Works are limited to 10 editions and 3 artist proofs A path on the granite outcrops traverses the Great Zimbabwe site from the eastern entrance onto the land occupied by ancient ruins. Approximately 400 meters from the Eastern Ruins a natural quartz line bisects the granite and forms the spiritual entrance to the site, the Mujejeje. Visitors approaching from the east remove their shoes at the Mujejeje and with a stone or rock lying beside it they tap from South to North along the quartz line to open the spiritual gate, step over and tap in the opposite direction to close it. The used stone is placed on a cairn at the north end of the quartz line and the visitor proceeds into the site. Exit from the site is achieved through the same process. Visitors can then climb the ancient or modern ascent to the Hill Top Complex. The multiple claims to the land at Great Zimbabwe are complex and include the Zimbabwe government, the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, UNESCO, the Nemanwa, Mugabe and Charumbira clans, visiting academia, tourists and the general Zimbabwe population. The disputes between the three clans claiming sacred rights to the land have been heated and violent on occasion. The demolished cairns at each end of the Mujejeje are said to be the result of this inter clan rivalry. This body of works considers some of the ancient ruins at Great Zimbabwe in the context of a contemporary Zimbabwe. Greg Marinovich, legendary documentary photographer and master lecturer, kindly wrote these words for my recent exhibition catalogue "Cairn". Great Zimbabwe 2014/5 Commentary on the photographic works of Gordon Massie By Greg Marinovich April 2019 Most images one sees of Great Zimbabwe – the plague of selfies notwithstanding – are a visual tribute to the long-dead rulers and builders of this mystical yet extremely substantial and material place. That this is a living place with contemporary meaning is almost always excluded in this fetishization; we are treated instead to sensuous curves and openings. The idea of a magnificent city built by Africans so offended the early European colonists that they insisted the site was of Arab, Phoenician or Jewish origin. Massie’s black and white images incorporate two distinct approaches. One uses an antique view camera to re-see and re-shoot photographs taken of Great Zimbabwe in the late 1920s by the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius. In the re-taking of these images, as faithful to the originals as possible, we see the outwardly-looking imagery of the site. Yet Massie introduces his own, particular vision in a conjoined series of images. These show varioius edifices in a different light, photographs like that of a demolished cairn along a power line of quartz set in the granite allow us to contemplate them from a present-day perspective; opening the discussion of the merits of ownership of a shared space or idea that had begun as a specific expression of power for a single group hundreds of years ago. The combination of these images make for an engrossing visual journey, a triumph of re-imagining and of re-addressing.

Photography:Black & White on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:16.6 W x 11 H x 0.1 D in

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