‘The Journey Home’ explores the daily walk to and from school in Cape Town’s gang-governed Cape Flats, where the threat of violence shapes ordinary childhood routines. Made collaboratively with young participants, the work offers an intimate portrait of adolescence, danger and resilience.

Making our way home from school is a simple and widely shared ritual. Yet in South Africa, a country marked by deep social divides, this daily journey can carry very different realities. In the Cape Flats of Cape Town, young people walk to and from school while navigating the daily threat of gang crossfire.

As cameras pass between Pannack and the young participants, the project unfolds through dialogue and collaboration. Working with analogue photography, drawing, poetry, collage and cyanotypes, they create a body of work that reflects the complexity and contradictions of adolescence. The process remains open-ended, shaped by the evolving nature of the project and the lives it follows.

For many, the journey home is a space for reflection, laughter and daydreaming. In the Cape Flats, however, each step is deliberate and every route carefully considered. Gang violence shapes the rhythm of daily life, turning a simple walk into a passage through uncertainty. By sharing cameras and creative authorship, ‘The Journey Home’ moves beyond sensationalised narratives, offering a layered portrait of friendship, humour, danger and determination within these communities.

While rooted in Cape Town, the work speaks to wider questions of safety, freedom of movement and the experience of growing up. Through handmade and experimental processes, it becomes not only a record of risk, but a testament to the resilience of youth.

Artist Bio

Laura Pannack is a London-based photographic artist. Her practice investigates the space between fact and feeling, rooted in analogue photography, primarily medium and large format, and expanded through collage, mixed media and experimental techniques. Grounded in the tradition of social documentary portraiture, her work stretches the boundaries of narrative and authorship, creating images that are as much about internal landscapes as external realities.

A strong interest in psychology and science runs through her process, shaping how she observes, connects and collaborates. She is drawn to transitional states, adolescence, emotional thresholds and unseen tensions. Often working over long periods, she allows ideas and relationships to unfold organically, creating images that hold intimacy, ambiguity and space for reflection.