Life Itself
Photography and South Africa
Simon A. ClarkeSouth Africa’s visual history from colonialism to democracy, through iconic photography.
Charting the photographic history of a country from colonialism to democracy, from the early European photographers to work today by young South Africans, Life Itself explores how people, events and places have been depicted in photographic images over the decades. Featuring images from the heyday of Drum magazine and Black emergence to Peter Magubane’s Soweto uprising pictures, David Goldblatt’s In Boksburg to the photographers' collective Afrapix and the struggles for freedom, the book concludes with post-apartheid documentary and art photography in the work of Andrew Tshabangu, Lindokuhle Sobekwa and others. Life Itself helps to fill a gap in our understanding of the role of the camera in South African society over time. Superbly illustrated, it is accessibly written for anyone curious about the visual representation of the nation.
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Life Itself is likely to be the most important book ever published on the history of South African photography. Simon A. Clarke’s text is elucidating and the well-chosen photographs for the book are aesthetic and documentary at the same time.
'Roger Ballen, artist/photographer
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Throughout Clarke’s photographic history of struggle is inserted contextual writing telling the terrible story of the development of apartheid and its increasing repression . . . Clarke approaches the subject with a critical and historical lens, analysing photography as both an artistic expression and a socio-political tool . . . an outstanding study of how images have shaped narratives of identity, resistance and power in South Africa.
'Morning Star
Introduction
1 Photographic Beginnings: Colonial Cultures and Topographical (Mis-) Representations, 1834–1910
2 Photographic Transitions: Old Tropes and Modernist Perspectives, 1910–50
3 New Observations: Drum Photography and the Soweto Uprising, 1950–78
4 Struggle Photography: Quiet Social Moments and Frontline Activism, 1978–94
5 Photographic Situations: Conceptions of Legacies and Contemporary Realities, 1994–2020
References
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Simon A. Clarke is Senior Lecturer at Falmouth University. His previous books include Print: Fashion, Interiors, Art. He has undertaken photography fieldwork and research in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar and Madagascar.