This paper presents a temporal and spatial ‘sojourn’ through a single photograph taken by Daniel Morolong in the 1960s on the beachside in East London, a port city located in the Eastern Cape. It depicts six subjects who re-enact the sixteenth-century Italian ‘Neptune fountains’, which included mythological figures such as the god of water, water nymphs, and satyrs. The figure of the satyr on the fountains alluded to the theatre genre of the satyr-play in antiquity, which often took place by the seashore. One of its key motifs was the satyrs' quest to navigate unfamiliar surroundings they encountered far from home. Morolong's photograph is a part of a series that were used by their subjects to make claims for belonging in the context of apartheid-era forced removals from the city. This essay considers how the photograph is a performance in a quest to return home precisely through the subjects' invocation of satyrs, and, in turn, it reflects on how the photograph as a technological medium that is marked by water in both literal and figurative ways, is too a ‘satyrical’ object.

本文通过丹尼尔·莫隆（Daniel Morolong）1960年代在东伦敦（位于东开普省的一个港口城市）的海滩上拍摄的单张照片呈现了时空的“逗留”。它描绘了重新创作16世纪意大利“海王星喷泉”的六个主题，其中包括神话人物，例如水神，水仙女和色狼。喷泉上的色狼形象暗示了古代色狼戏剧的戏剧体裁，通常发生在海边。它的主要主题之一是色狼寻求在远离家乡的陌生环境中航行的追求。莫洛隆（Morolong）的照片是他们的拍摄对象用来宣称自己属于种族隔离时代被迫撤离该城市的背景下的系列作品的一部分。