During the World Cup, journalistic talent from across Africa gathered in Johannesburg for Twenty Ten to cover the impact of the competition on South Africa and the entire African continent. Photographer and multimedia journalist Simone Scholtz was selected to participate in the World Cup coverage, bringing her unique perspective as a South African to her reports. In the midst of the World Cup, Twenty Ten sat down with Scholtz to hear about her experience and discuss her expansion into multimedia through the Twenty Ten training programs.

Carly Diaz: How did you first hear out about the Twenty Ten project?
Simone Scholtz: I’ve been involved in this project for quite a while, since last year in July, when I started with the photographic training. I heard about this project through Africa Media Online, who sent out a list and we could apply. I first did the photography workshop in Ghana, which was absolutely amazing – a real eye opener.

Carly Diaz: How did the photography workshop change the way you worked?
Simone Scholtz: I suppose it has changed the way I see and look at things. The online training was very valuable as well, which took place six weeks prior to the training in Ghana. I think if I look back to the work I produced before these workshops and after, there’s a remarkable difference. It’s a different way of telling stories and also a difference in what I find to be a good story now as opposed to then. I fell a bit into that trap of doing very traditional stories, such as poverty. My first training assignment was about a man who played for the homeless soccer team. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s another one of those poverty, from the ashes stories. Now I think I’m using my knowledge more as a South African, my understanding of the culture that I’m coming from, and actually interpreting things more. I’m looking at other issues, bigger issues, and also different issues and different ways of seeing things.

Carly Diaz: Do you think your photo story of the lesbian football team is an example of that?
Simone Scholtz: Absolutely, that’s a very South African, and African, issue. These girls are incredible. They’re incredibly strong and, as young as they are, they’re very opinionated. I think it’s a very important story to tell, but it’s also very important to represent it in a different way.

Carly Diaz: How were you inspired to do the story about the Soweto street bashes?
Simone Scholtz: Originally, I wanted to do something on Kwaito culture, Kwaito which is a specific South African music genre. After speaking to a few local South African DJs, I realized that Kwaito was largely not the ‘in’ thing anymore. Then I naturally progressed to these fantastic street parties that they invited me to, where there’s a blend of different styles of African music.

Carly Diaz: You’re now also working on multimedia projects. Did you have a background in that before Twenty Ten?
Simone Scholtz: Not at all. After I heard I was accepted for the multimedia course, I picked up my camera manual for the first time. It was a fantastic experience and I’m very happy with the project for giving me that opportunity. It’s a whole new world and it’s a fantastic medium with so many new possibilities and new ways of telling stories. I think, as a photojournalist, you have the perfect background for multimedia because it’s all about composition and storytelling. I think photographers in general have an advantage above other journalists because you use composition and all those traditional skills, but in a multimedia format.

Carly Diaz: And how are you finding it to work with audio as well?
Simone Scholtz: Audio is my biggest challenge. Absolutely. It’s very technical. As much as it’s my biggest challenge, it’s also just an amazing tool. They story I’m working on at the moment is a very complex story basically on the South African history of incredible violence between 1990 and 1996 and our current situation of violence. I’m creating a link between the two. In stills, that just makes no sense. But the interviews really make these people’s stories come alive.

Carly Diaz: In the future, do you think you’ll be working more with multimedia or balancing photography and multimedia?
Simone Scholtz: Absolutely more towards multimedia. I’ll definitely keep a focus on photography as well. I mean, you have to be conscious to do that as well, but in the long run I think it’s multimedia.

Carly Diaz: Why is that?
Simone Scholtz: It’s the future. To get one photograph published for me, to be honest, it’s very difficult. Nevermind getting a photo essay published. For me personally, it’s very difficult. Whereas you can make a 3-4 minute multimedia piece with a whole photo essay in there and video. You’re actually your own editor. I edit my own work, so you’ve got total control. All of that coming together, as opposed to just still photography, personally makes it a very attractive medium.

Carly Diaz: Is part of the skill set that they’re teaching in Twenty Ten about how to promote yourself and sell your work? As you’ve said, it’s a changing market in which it’s hard to sell stuff.
Simone Scholtz: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s my biggest challenge, the marketing side. The South African market is incredibly difficult from an editorial point of view. Before I started this project, most of the work I did was for NGOs, corporates or travel magazines. But nothing that was strictly photojournalism. We don’t really have the publications, we don’t have in-depth magazines, we don’t have feature magazines. So it’s news or corporate or NGO. All those things are very slanted and it’s not the work that I enjoy most. None of the work that I’ve done for this project is likely to be published – I don’t think – in a mainstream South African publication. It’s a big challenge in South Africa. There is work, but it’s in different sectors.

Carly Diaz: How did you first get into photography?
Simone Scholtz: During my studies, I studied journalism at Rhodes University and it actually just happened. Originally I wanted to make documentaries – like TV documentaries. So in a way I’m also coming back to that which is really interesting. So then I went to university to do that and then I didn’t like all that teamwork with the TVs because I’m a bit of an introvert. So I went to photography and I think now with multimedia I can still work alone.

Carly Diaz: What do you think is your favorite photo story or multimedia piece that you’ve done so far through this project?
Simone Scholtz: I think the one for me that was a real eye opener was a project I did on Ventersdorp after the murder of the right-wing leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, looking at the relationship between black and white, looking at the relationship between farmers and workers. So far that was my favorite project, also in terms of multimedia because it was the perfect medium for me to allow people to speak for themselves, but also to get the other footage. It was the most challenging one for sure.

Carly Diaz: While here, I have been speaking with some South African photographers who spent time covering the anti-apartheid movement. One observed that more contemporary, younger South African photographers aren’t really covering social and political subjects, but when you look at the themes coming out of Twenty Ten, my impression is that it’s very social in nature.
Simone Scholtz: Absolutely, it’s very social and very political, but also what I really appreciate about this project is that it’s about new ways of seeing, not just covering a riot. To me, that is essentially more hard news, traditional journalism and not new photojournalism. For instance, I’m not interested in going to the funeral. I’m interested in going to the farm where the normal family lives where the workers have been living with the same families for the last 200 years. That to me is the story, not the riot. The story to me is the person behind that, trying to understand something. The story is not the car hijacking that happened yesterday, but the guy who hijacked the car. Why is he doing that? Where’s this coming from? I don’t think you can be a South African photographer and not be socially aware. Not today.

Carly Diaz: And you call this the ‘new photojournalism’?
Simone Scholtz: Haha, there sort of used to be a trend: ‘If it bleeds, it leads’. If you’re not close enough, it’s not good enough. Guns, war, fire and riots. I think there’s a trend, at least among photographers on the Twenty Ten project, away from that and looking at alternative ways of showing it.

Click here to read the biography of Simone Scholtz and to see an overview of the work she produced with Twenty Ten.