John Robinson takes a special interest in exploring the issues and icons of death and culture in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. The city is riddled with an increasing problem of pandemic Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) where death is imminent.
His photographs capture the essence of death as a communal experience by the living and the dead. In doing so, he evokes a sense of culture of ‘living among the dead’ represented by funerals and grave visiting, which has quickly become a permanent weekly fixture in the city for the living. Finally, he also strives to elicit the idea of continuum in the cyclical nature of life and death.