The Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life brings together the work of some of the nation’s most respected photographers and artists in a show that is both discomforting and exhilarating.
The exhibition, spread out over two floors, features mostly black and white photographs but also includes video installations and a book.
Curator Okwui Enwezor said that, when planning the exhibition, two things became apparent.
“We were going to look at the relationship between apartheid and image production, and it was going to be a show about South African photographers,” he said.
“No one photographed South Africa more precisely, more critically, more astutely than South African photographers. This is a new history of photography and the place of South African photography within that [history].”
Among the photographers and artists whose work forms part of the show are Roger Ballen, Jodi Bieber, Ernest Cole, Gille de Vlieg, David Goldblatt, Gavin Jantjes, William Kentridge, Alf Kumalo, John Liebenberg, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Gopal Naransamy, Ken Oosterbroek, Jurgen Schadeburg, Eli Weinberg and Sue Williamson.
Many of the photographs have not been exhibited before.
The first video installations encountered by visitors are newsreels from two moments that Enwezor said were “indelibly etched on South Africa’s memory”; scenes of Hendrik Verwoerd explaining apartheid from 1948, and scenes of FW de Klerk and the unbanning of the ANC from 1990.
Other video installations include scenes of Nelson Mandela’s release from Victor Verster Prison, and Kentridge’s film, Drawings for Projector.
The exhibition, made possible by support from the International Centre of Photography, presents scenes from the lives of ordinary and extraordinary South Africans, from Winnie Mandela and her sister on the steps of the Palace of Justice, to Verwoerd’s unsuccesful assassination attempt, to activists and protestors on street corners, to right- and left-wing responses.
More than mere documentary, the exhibition conveys the deep traumas, fighting spirit and great resilience of the people who form this scarred nation.
Enwezor said the exhibition could be described, in part, as a “detective story”, and that it had a “breadcrumb effect”.
“Little details in the pictures begin to unravel,” he said while pointing out a 1964 Tokyo Olympics logo on a woman’s handbag in one photograph.
“That was the first international event from which South Africa was banned… The photographs are discursive, not just visual instruments.”
The Rise and Fall of Apartheid is at Museum Africa, 121 Bree Street, Newtown, until 29 June.
Details: 011 833 5624; www.riseandfallofapartheid.org
