© Jono Terry from the series Rhodesiana Africanus

All text and images by: Jono Terry

Most recently my photographic work explores the social history of Zimbabwe, the country of my birth and aims to engage with the subsequent politics of belonging since its independence in 1980. As a grandson of British immigrants to Rhodesia, I am interested in questioning my own belonging as a colonial legacy and navigating the complex landscape of white, Zimbabwean (African) identity. My current long-term project, They Still Owe Him a Boat focuses on the colonial legacy and white collective memory and experience of the largest man-made lake in the world, Lake Kariba.

Photographically I see my work as a self-examination of myself, of my upbringing, and of my white Zimbabwean culture which for large portions of my life I have been completely blind to. It is driven by my aim to unpack the colonial history of Zimbabwe whilst simultaneously locating my own position, past and present, within it. I think the notion of ‘home’ is always romanticised and it is no different for me, but I want my work to simultaneously reflect the beauty of home whilst attempting to confront the idea that my attachment to it is essentially rooted in colonialism. The seeds of colonialism sowing the seeds of my own identity.

I am drawn to the symbolism within images that reference some form of colonial legacy that continues to exist in contemporary African society. Swimming pools, for example, played a central role in the formation of white Rhodesian identity, they were part of the allure of ‘the Rhodesian way of life’ as considerable amounts of time were spent swimming, playing golf, lawn bowls and tennis. The pinnacle of this lifestyle was owning your own swimming pool and it became something to aspire to. Inadvertently it became and remains a symbol of privilege. In my personal project, Born in Africa, Death Unknown I photographed a series of public and private swimming pools in an attempt to show that while many things have changed – the decline of the British Empire, the emergence of the black middle class, and the deterioration of the Zimbabwean economy (again) many of the colonial legacies associated with the heyday of the swimming pool have not.

The title of the body of work comes from the first lines of a poem written by my aunt when she had moved to the UK from Rhodesia, a route I was to follow many years later. She was experiencing a profound sense of rootlessness and had begun to question her own identity and what it meant to belong. The final lines are my own.