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Having grown up in Apartheid South Africa I soon realized something was not quiet right with the society I was living in. There was segregation in all businesses and especially in public places. Of course by the time I was a teenager things had changed a lot and the laws were not as strict as in the 60S/70S. In an attempt to make sense of this bizarre part of my childhood I rented the studio of the local white photographer in the town I grew up in and invited black and coloured South African’s on the street to come in for a portrait, something that would have been forbidden at the height of apartheid. I used the same backdrops I found in the studio which the photographer is still using and had used more than 35 years ago for family portraits and weddings. Both backdrops show scenes which have nothing to do with the real lives of most people and somehow are meant to depict the sitter in an improved if not surreal world.