Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Starting out, like many ‘struggle’ photographers, as a documentor of Apartheid-era spectacle and suffering, Santu Mofokeng moved towards capturing the ineffable, the unseen and the obscured in his rich and reflective images of lived experience in South Africa in the 1980s. Amongst the most suggestive works he produced is a series of images showing the informal transformation of train carriages into mobile prayer meetings with commuters chanting, clapping, singing and drumming their way to work – a sonic and spiritual rejoinder to the objectification and dehumanization to which black South Africans were subject under Nationalist rule. This paper will reflect on photography’s capacity to capture the ‘interstices’ of life under Apartheid, and will mobilise ideas around the sonic, the spiritual and the social as counter-representational practices that inscribe life and even joy into the picture.

Der Vortrag findet im Anschluss an den Workshop „PhotoBook Africa. Traces of stories, images and imagery“ (Beginn 13 Uhr) statt.