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Natures Valley Beach, South Africa. African Stories: The Bummer.||.Oberholzer: The world has slid into 2019 without an apocalypse. After coming home from Italy, I decided to clean out my studio. Right in the corner, beneath the elephant thighbone and a Lesotho blanket, I found Peter Bummer. It's a sculptural work of art, a beauteous gladiator of a bum. .Long ago, before global warming and the digital age, I lived in Durban and taught analogue photography at the Natal Technikon. This college shows its work to the Durban public with an annual ‘Open day' exhibition. The art school, situated across the street from the main campus, was closed to visitors on this day, as it was considered a visual disaster. In protest, the art students and lecturers did an action painting on an exterior wall, in full view of the passing public. Peter Bummer, with a physique to match Hercules, gave the public an intermittent bummer from a window in Smith Street. As a lecturer of rebellious repute, I was asked to record all the action painting and the regular appearance of Bum Peter in the window. .To pre-empt the disciplinary tribunal that was to follow as a result of our sins against the Durban public, my colleagues devised an ingenious cover-up plan. It was impossible to deny the presence of Big Pete's bum, so we made a plaster cast of it. The sight of him lying naked on a table with his bum being wrapped in plaster of Paris still flickers as a classic on my screen of memories. At a trial the following day, we were accused of public indecency, bringing the college into disrepute. The plaster cast, now painted red, was presented as evidence and called ‘an artwork that expresses human form and motion'. At the trial, Peter Bummer held up the plaster cast for the panel of judges to see. This was a special moment to witness. Here we had a bunch of conservative heads and councilors of an academic institute looking at a young student holding up his bum and presenting it as art. Art com-eth, art go-eth, but those moments will live-eth forever. Then somehow, time washed over Peter Bummer's bum, till I discovered him again in my photographic studio, wrapped in a Sotho blanket. With pomp and pride I walked Peter down to our beach where I made a sand-art installation of him. For a short while, before the waves washed him away, he was once again able to show the world his magnificent gladiator of a bum. (KEYSTONE/LAIF/Obie Oberholzer)