Echoing Through Centuries w/ Carl van der Linde

There’s a beat pulsing through Cape Town, louder than the city’s bustling streets—a rhythm steeped in history, born from the townships, and echoing through centuries. Some stories are carved into walls; others navigate the world like unspoken prayers. Within the historic Observatory Methodist Church, our eyes cross with Carl van der Linde, a quiet observer and a loud storyteller. Amidst the harmonious rhythm of SboNdaba Dance, Carl’s lens seizes confessions—rebellious, fleeting, and utterly human.

Carl’s shutter clicks as the tangible and intangible meet—a dance of freedom, spontaneity, and the dynamism of life. His photographs transform fleeting moments into visual threads that connect lives, stories, and identities. “I snapped a picture, minding my own business, when I heard music coming from its hallowed doors. I went in, sat down, and watched the dancers—and the rest is history,” Carl muses. What began as a chance encounter became a serendipitous calling, drawing him into a shared rhythm that transcends words.

His mission is to take from life—to capture its moments, feel its breaths, hear its silences. Carl calls photography a statement, but it feels more like a question. A manifesto that pries open the cracks where identity, tradition, and modernity collide. Movement becomes defiance, and the mundane transforms into poetry. “Being a photographer means borrowing moments from strangers,” he reflects, but perhaps it’s more than that. It’s the weight of carrying someone else’s truth, raw and unfiltered, and turning it into a shared reflection.

What does it mean to move as one, to transform struggle into grace and grace into strength? To inhabit a rhythm larger than yourself, yet carry your individual story within it? As Carl’s lens frames these moments, it captures not just the dancers but the essence of “us”. The rhythm spirals through thought and form, asking the eternal question: where do we belong? In these images, we don’t just see the dancers—we see the untold poetries within ourselves, waiting to be heard.