As I look back and attempt to measure my impulse, I might say I was compelled by the relative ease of turning my lens towards that view. It seemed unlikely anyone could see me or hear the click of the shutter, and I liked the monologue. Since I rarely pictured people I felt no guilt. The painted wall on the right suggests this as the backyard of a nursery or primary school, and on a number of occasions there was a mass assembling of cars, perhaps for a parents and teachers meeting.

The typical photograph in this series shows a person in the middle of an activity. Those activities, as Thero Makepe explains, are often re-enactments of his family’s past. We can assume correctly that these pictured individuals are members of his family. They perform a version of themselves, at his bidding, for the camera.

Fibi Afloe’s photographs were taken in a compound house where her family and other families lived for 70 years. Hers is the third generation of occupants in the same locale. Her experience is not as common in this century as it was in the previous one, when it was wholly possible to live all your life in the house you were born.

Both sepia-toned photographs share expanse as their perspective, although the scale is distinguishable. Lidudumalingani took his from the 27th floor of an apartment complex in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, and I took mine from the window seat of a Washington DC-bound Amtrak, a hour after we pulled out of the station. Lidudumalingani reads the migrant history of Jo’burg into his photo