Listening to the women in Forever discuss their own images confronts us spectators with our own status as voyeurs. A similar voyeurism sustains our attention in Tova Mozard’s Poverty and Hardship, where a man presents himself to the camera in what Gilles Deleuze might call a “becoming-image” of himself. This well-dressed man, who traipses around and shows off his finely tailored suit within the confines of a modest and unfashionable bedroom, is a Swenka – one of a small group of South African working-class men who compete weekly to be judged “most stylish.” The men adhere to a set of values such as cleanliness, sobriety, and, above all, self-respect. In this video, the man performs for us, his imagined viewers, and by extension for the camera, rather than for the panel of judges who award the winners of these competitions with prizes such as goats, cows, and money. As the video begins, the man appears poised in anticipation of his cue. When he realizes that the camera is on, he begins his peculiar self-display. The voiceover in the background consists of an interview with a journalist who explains how he came to know the Swenka and why he wanted to make them known to the world. This voiceover mediates what would otherwise seem to be odd behavior, although it is not unlike that seen in the millions of personal home videos posted on YouTube, the world’s largest website for video content. Describing his experience, the journalist thus brings to the fore the act of documentation. His voiceover demarcates the gap between the subject and the recorder, making this piece as much about seeing and documenting as it is about being seen and being documented.
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