We revisit an interview with the visual activist ahead of their first major survey in Germany opening at Gropius Bau
Tag: Apartheid
On the final weekend of the photographer’s first survey exhibition, Ractliffe reflects on her approach to photographing South Africa during apartheid’s later years
Testimony, at Goodman Gallery, London, reflects on the violence and oppression of apartheid and complicates…
17 March 2021
Johannesburg was the late photographer’s home for 50 years. Now, an exhibition at Goodman Gallery, London, charts his nuanced documentation of the city during apartheid and the post-apartheid period
“We look at the statistics and the hospitals, focusing on the people who have contracted the illness, and we forget about how the situation impacts the community”
In 1990, Gideon Mendel left a box of negatives in his friend’s garage in South Africa. Now, 30 years later, the damaged negatives are reincarnated in a photobook
Thabiso Sekgala documented the born-free generation living in the shadow of apartheid. A new exhibition surveying the late photographer’s work highlights his unique approach
The American photographer spent a decade documenting daily life in the same township in South Africa
Twenty five years have passed since apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela became president. Ilvy Njiokiktjien’s decade-long project documents the opportunities and challenges faced by the children of the “rainbow nation”
“I became interested in photography in the late 1940s and began to look at magazines such as Life, Look, and Picture Post,” David Goldblatt told Colin Pantall, writing for BJP in 2013. “In the early 1950s, I tried to become a magazine photographer. I sent my pictures to Picture Post and got rejected. Then, when the African National Congress became active in their struggle against apartheid, Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post, contacted me and asked if I could make something. So I went to an ANC meeting and photographed everything I saw. That was in 1952.
“I shot and I shot and I shot and then I realised that I was using a long roll of film – film that had failed to engage on the sprocket of the Leica I was using. It was an incredibly basic mistake. But the other thing I realised was that I wasn’t really interested in what was happening around me.
“After the ANC meeting, I discovered I had to understand what I was competent in and what I was interested in. That took some years to probe, until I could get to the underbelly of the society that underlay South Africa. And to understand it visually, I also had to get a grasp on the history of the country. So I did a degree, which included courses in English and economic history. This taught me how to think and understand what was happening around me.
“My father died in 1963. I was 32 with three children and a family, but I sold the shop [the family business] and, with a couple of Leicas and the capital to keep on going for a year, I became a full-time photographer.”