Exhibition
Munich: Rise and Fall
of Apartheid
Coffins at the mass funural held in KwaThema, Gauteng, July 23, 1985 © Gille de Vlieg
Protest against Chris Hani’s assassination, 1993 © Goodman Gallery Johannesburg
Pauline Moloise (mother of Ben), two women & Winnie Madikizela Mandela mourn at the Memorial Service for Benjamin Moloise, who was hanged earlier that morning. Khotso House, Johannesburg, October 18, 1985. © Gille de Vlieg
Mai 1985/ Jean Sinclair, founding member of Black Sash, protesting in Jan Smuts Ave, Johannesburg, May 30, 1895 © Gille de Vlieg
South Africa goes on trial. Police outside the court. The whole world was watching when the three major sabotage trials started in Pretoria, Cape Town and Maritzburg. Outside the palace of Justice during the Rivonia Trial, 1963. Courtesy of Bailey’s Archive © Bailey's Archives
Jurgen Schadeberg Nelson Mandela, Treason Trial, 1958. Courtesy the artist.
Crowd near the Drill Hall on the opening day of the Treason Trial, Johannesburg, 19. Dezember 1956 Times Media Collection, Museum Africa, Johannesburg
Chief Albert Luthuli, former President General of the African National Congress, Rector of Glasgow University and 1960 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, gagged by the government from having any of his words published in his country, confined to small area around his home near Stanger in Natal, April 1964. © Bailey's Archives
Nelson Mandela portrait wearing traditional beads and a bed spread. Hiding out from the police during his period as the “black pimpernel,” 1961 Courtesy of IDAFSA
20 defiance campaign Leaders appear in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court on a charge of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act, August 26, 1952. Courtesy the artist
Nelson Mandela mit Winnie Mandela as he is released from the Victor Vester Prison, 1990 Courtesy the artist © Greame Williams
Right-wing groups gather in Pretoria’s Church Square to voice the anger at the F.W. de Klerk government’s attemps to transform the country, 1990. Courtesy the artist © Greame Williams
The 29 ANC Women’s League women are being arrested by the police for demonstrating against the permit laws, which prohibited them from entering townships without a permit, 26th August 1952. Courtesy the artist
Walter Sisulu and his wife Albertina at their Soweto home after his release from Prison, 1989 Courtesy the artist © Greame Williams
Portrait of Nelson Mandela painted on the grass of Soweto’s largest football stadium during an election rally, 1994 Courtesy the artist © Greame Williams
Coffins at the mass funural held in KwaThema, Gauteng, July 23, 1985 © Gille de Vlieg
Complex, vivid, evocative, and dramatic, "Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life" represents the most comprehensive exhibition of its kind, attempting to formulate an understanding of apartheid's legacy in South Africa through visual records. These images responded to the procedures and processes of the apartheid state from its beginning in 1948 to the first non-racial democratic elections that attended its demise in 1994. Featuring more than 600 documentary photographs, artworks, films, newsreel footage, books, magazines, and assorted archival documents, the exhibition will fill more than 2,000 square meters of the East Wing of Haus der Kunst. Starting in the entrance gallery (where two film clips are juxtaposed; one from 1948 showing the victorious Afrikaner National Party's celebration rally, and another of President F.W. De Klerk in February 1990 announcing Nelson Mandela's release from prison) the exhibition offers an absorbing exploration of one of the twentieth century's most contentious historical eras.
The exhibition highlights the different strategies adopted by photographers and artists; from social documentary to reportage, photo essays to artistic appropriation of press and archival material. Through these polysemic images, the exhibition embarks on a tour of how photographers and artists think with pictures, the questions these images pose, and the issues of social justice, resistance, civil rights and the actions of opposition to apartheid raise. In so doing, "Rise and Fall of Apartheid" brings together many iconic photographs that have rarely been shown before, to propose a fresh historical overview of the photographic and artistic responses to apartheid.
The exhibition is curated by Okwui Ewenzor (Director Haus der Kunst, Munich) with Rory Bester (Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg) and was organized by the International Center of Photography in New York in collaboration with Haus der Kunst. It was on view at ICP from Sep 14, 2012 until Jan 06, 2013.
Exhibition
Rise and Fall of Apartheid:
Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life
February 15 — May 26, 2013
Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstraße 1
80538 München
Germany
Catalogue
Published by Prestel with essays by Rory Bester, Okwui Enwezor, Michael Godby, Khwezi Gule, Patricia Hayes, Achille Mbembe, Darren Newbury, Colin Richards and Andries Walter Oliphant;
544 pages, 59 €
ISBN 978-3-7913-5280-0
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