the trips  filled with love & signs.

She looks away, as if something else matters more than the lens. As if the story she carries doesn’t quite fit into the frame.

I didn’t ask her much about the past. In South Africa, it’s not a simple subject. But it’s there. Always.

During apartheid, everything was designed to separate people — not only by race, but by families. Men were sent away to work, mainly in mines and cities, often living there alone for years, far from their loved ones. That was how the system worked.

Women stayed.

In rural areas, in the so-called homelands — places meant to be temporary, but which became entire lives. They took care of children, homes, food, the structure of each day. They worked too — wherever work was available. Without security, without real choice.

It wasn’t any kind of exceptional strength. It was necessity.

And looking at her, I don’t think of history as something closed. I think of what remains in a person, even when times change. A way of being that doesn’t need explanation.

She didn’t say much.

But some things are immediately visible.

In 1956, twenty thousand women marched to the government buildings in Pretoria. They walked in silence. No shouting. No violence. Their protest was quiet, yet powerful. In South Africa, people still say: “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.”

I look at her and I see that rock.

Not in physical strength, but in her gaze. In the fact that she doesn’t need to prove anything. Her presence is enough. She is both shadow and light — reserved, but real.

Her headscarf is not decoration. It is practical. Sometimes protection, sometimes identity. In many communities in South Africa, women still wear it as a sign of belonging — to a place, to a history, to themselves.

She didn’t say much. But some stories don’t need words. They are written in the way someone looks past you, as if seeing more.

As if remembering.

And I stand in front of her with my camera, knowing I’m not just taking a photograph. I’m trying to touch something that existed long before me.

And will remain long after I’m gone.

BELLA ARGAZAM

January,2024

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