Billy Monk

Capturing the catacombs

Billy Monk, The Catacombs, 23 December 1967, 1967, Pigment ink on archival paper, Edition of 12, 42 x 63cm

Billy Monk was a bouncer and a photographer in underground nightclubs in dockside Cape Town in the late ‘60s. Underground in both senses of the word, these clubs, such as The Catacombs, allowed revelers of all creeds, colours and sexual orientations to party in unbridled joy. Above ground, apartheid was in full force and District Six, minutes away from the club, was being torn apart and races divided. Many of the marginalised communities, particularly the LGBTQI and dockside prostitutes (sugar girls), who congregated inside the club, would have been arrested outside this safe bubble. But this enticing ‘danger’ and edginess that the dark and dingy spot exuded also attracted the wealthy Southern Suburbs-set, eager to ‘slum it’ for the night. To witness the ‘bizarre’, safe in the knowledge that what they saw (or did) remained there.

Billy Monk, The Catacombs, 20 October 1967, 1967, Pigment ink on archival paper, Edition of 12, 38 x 25cm

Monk's position as bouncer afforded him a special closeness with the patrons, allowing candid and revealing images of these subcultures, as well as the privileged few in their finest gear. Transgenders, homosexuals, mixed-race couples, sugar girls and foreign sailors and even rebellious teens. They were all captured by Billy Monk’s lens and frozen in time in the graphic, stark camera-flash that allowed nothing and no one to hide. As David Goldblatt says: “This was no foreigner coming in and invading their space and their premises. He was one of them.” He was sympathetic and sensitive and very much a part of this special scene so unique in South Africa’s history. His photographs reflect this sensitivity and honesty.

Portrait of Billy Monk

Sadly Monk never got to see his work displayed on any gallery wall. After a decade spent diamond diving on the west coast of South Africa, his box of negatives was rediscovered by Jac de Villiers. An exhibition was staged at the Market Gallery in Johannesburg in 1982 but en route to attend his show, Billy Monk was tragically shot and killed. His images live on though, providing a rare glimpse into this little-known slice of Cape Town's history.