‘Transitions’ documents shifting male identity. This was the 7th showing of this touring solo museum exhibition comprising an installation of 5 original drawings, courtesy of the Spier Contemporary Collection and the short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’ (2008). ‘Transitions’ premiered at The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg South Africa in 2008. Art Source South Africa are managers of Emmanuel’s ‘Transitions’ project. Artists statement In late 2004 I was exploring how the military influenced and perpetuated notions of masculinity in South Africa. One morning, while thinking about moments of change, I decided to photograph an actual military recruit head shaving while it was happening – to witness to an unfolding drama. After some research, I discovered that there were only two remaining military bases in South Africa which still perform this obligatory ‘rite of passage’ on their premises, one in Oudtshoorn and the other, Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley. I phoned the Kimberley base, spoke to the Officer-in-Command and arranged a visit to photograph head shavings from the January 2005 intake. I remember feeling apprehensive of what I would find. I did not do military service. I only had references to military experiences told to me by my older brother and friends, who described their head shaving experiences of the apartheid military regime of the 1980s – their stories of feeling dehumanised, lots of shouting, indifference, bigotry and fear. Instead, I found a very different setting ... quiet lawns with well tended flower beds full of roses. Lines of recruits waiting patiently. No shouting. No authoritarianism. No evidence of the violent breaking down of the human spirit. Compared with the horror stories related to South Africa’s past, the equanimity of the scene was arresting. I was spellbound. These liminal moments of transition, when a young man either voluntarily – or is forced to – let go of one identity and take on a new identity as State Property with an assigned Force Number, prompted me to ask many questions: What was I actually witnessing? What is a “Rite of Passage” and how have similar “rituals” helped to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history? Why was I so powerfully drawn to and transfixed by these dramatic spectacles of subtle change and moments of suspended possibility and impossibility? And so began an intensely reflexive outward and inward journey, in and beyond my studio, which was to last four long years ...