Notice how different the rich and poor areas of Cape Town are. This is especially well seen from a bird’s eye view, which photographer Johnny Miller was able to emphasize. He used a drone with a high-definition camera to take pictures of different areas of the city.
Cape Town is famous not only for its spectacular cityscapes, but also for its stark contrast between poverty and wealth. Even though South Africa’s apartheid era ended over twenty years ago, there is still a palpable economic gap between the city’s blacks and whites. Despite equal rights, the black majority still occupies the bottom rung of society, where they continue to struggle with deep poverty, unemployment and disease. The economic disparity becomes even more pronounced once you’re in the air. This was clearly demonstrated by the American photographer Johnny Miller, who lives in Cape Town. Here are some shots from his latest photoshoot “Unequal Scenes”.
“Drone photography is interesting because it gives people a new perspective on places they knew from a different perspective,” Miller said. The photographer flew his drone to some of Cape Town’s most contrasting areas, such as Masifumelele. A community of 38,000 lives in small, miserable shacks, and right across the street is an upmarket neighborhood with homes worth millions of dollars.
These impoverished areas are a real urban hell, full of disease, crime, unemployment, anger and hopelessness. At the same time, all the rich pleasures of life are available in the neighborhood: the Internet, cars, amenities, swimming pools, work, hope … Some of these ultra-rich areas are physically separated from run-down shacks by electric fences and guardhouses, and sometimes by natural barriers in the form of swamps and lakes. Many of these communities have been developed with this division in mind, while others have come about naturally. Miller says the problem is not limited to Cape Town. Similar contrasting scenes exist in other South African cities, including Durban and Johannesburg.