How jazz gave me life
Ongoing project
In parts of Cape Town, where violence and uncertainty shape everyday life, the future is often narrowed early, with little room to change course.
How Jazz Gave Me Life is an ongoing long-term photographic project that follows young musicians growing up within this reality. Where the presence of gangs, drugs, and poverty is constant, but never the full story. Within these conditions, they are continuously trying to carve out a different path, one shaped by discipline, creativity, and persistence.
Jazz, for them, is not just music. It becomes structure. A form of resistance. A way to imagine something beyond what surrounds them. In rehearsal rooms, small homes, and in-between spaces across the city, this process is unfolding every day — fragile, inconsistent, but real.
The work stays close over time, observing how these lives evolve. Some move forward, others drift away, many remain somewhere in between. There is no fixed narrative, no clear outcome — only a continuous negotiation between distraction and focus, between pressure and possibility.
What emerges is not a story of transformation with a beginning and an end, but one that is constantly in motion. A process shaped by repetition, setbacks, small victories, and the quiet determination to continue.
