Jo Ractliffe: Under a State of Emergency
“Ractliffe’s work, whether consciously or not, emerges at a time when the impossibility of representing experience started to gain purchase in discussions around the medium’s shortfalls.”
Tag Archives: South Africa
Chaos in the Landscape: Nico Krijno’s How to Leave Your Body Behind
“Krijno’s images are threaded through with references to South Africa’s colonial history and its fragile post-apartheid democracy.”
Roger Ballen: Ballenesque Interview
“Archetypal symbols from the human subconscious dominate my imagery.”
Nico Krijno: Enemy of Convention Unseen 2015
“The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do.’ The salvation of photography comes from the experiment”. 1947, László Moholy-Nagy Nico Krijno at Unseen 2015 with The Ravestijn Gallery, Booth 51 Nico Krijno is South African artist whose works inspire a certain aptitude for the photographic medium where color, form, […]
Architectural Icons and Broken Dreams: Subotzky and Waterhouse’s Ponte City
Ponte City came to stand for urban decay and criminality, and in some of the more right-wing imaginings, as a symbol of the failure of black majority rule.
A Conversation with Pieter Hugo – Xenophobia, Self-Censorship and the Commodity of ‘Blackness’
“We live in an era where artists constantly have to self censor. In my experience more often to pander to a disingenuous idea of political correctness than to conservatism.”
Tracy Edser, Lisa King, Nadine Hutton, Alexia Webster, Nontsikelelo Veleko – “POV Johannesburg” (2013)
from Urban Life: Beauty is in the Name of the Beholder @ Nontsikelelo Veleko POV Female Johannesburg, REVIEW. By Fanny Landstrom, for ASX, July 2013 POV Female Johannesburg – five young female artists featured in a limited edition box of 100 copies. POV stands for Point Of View and has featured artists from London (2011), Tokyo […]
David Goldblatt: “Particulars” (1975)
“I seem to have an innate propensity which has been fed by life experiences and heightened by the kind of hyper-awareness that photography sometimes enables and demands…” “My first awareness of a bodily particular that I can recall was of the bulges made by the flattened flesh of my inner thighs as I sat […]
Apartheid, White Society and Photography – David Goldblatt is Interviewed at Arles (2006)
Farmer’s Son with his Nursemaid. Marico Bushveld, December 1964, 1964 “During the years of apartheid, I was concerned with trying to…with exploring why people valued this peculiar and evil system and how they expressed those values in their homes, in themselves, in their bodies, in the things that they built.” Interview conducted by Laetitia Martinez, […]
Mikhael Subotzky – “To See as a Photographer Sees” (2012)
Mikhael Subotzky’s photographic work combines the directness of the social documentary mode with a questioning of the nature of the photographic medium itself. His work has focused on the inside and outside of South Africa’s notorious prisons, the small town of Beaufort West, and Ponte City. His work has been exhibited widely in major galleries […]
Billy Monk – “Cape Town Nightclub” (1967-1969)
Billy Monk worked as a bouncer in the notorious Catacombs club in the dock area of Cape Town during the 1960s. For just two years, 1967 to 1969, he captured the raw energy of the club, its decadence and tragedy, its humanity and joy. They provide an extraordinarily evocative glimpse of Cape Town’s little-seen […]
Pieter Hugo in Conversation (2007)
Pieter Hugo in Conversation with Joanna Lehan (21 February 2007), Published in Messina/Musina, Punctum Editions, 2007 JL: Musina is the northernmost town in South Africa. Its name has been changed, and this fact is highlighted in the overarching title of your project, Messina/Musina. What is its significance? PH: Musina is situated just south of the […]