Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life
Exhibition 15.02 – 26.05.13
"Rise and Fall of Apartheid" offers a comprehensive historical overview of the pictorial response to apartheid, which has never been undertaken before. Through its images, it explores the significance of the civil rights struggle, from how apartheid defined South Africa’s identity from 1948 to 1994, to the rise of Nelson Mandela, and finally its lasting impact. It examines the aesthetic power of the documentary form – from the photo essay to reportage, social documentary to photojournalism and art – in recording, analyzing, articulating, and confronting apartheid’s legacy and effects on everyday life in South Africa.
Apartheid, the compound Dutch word meaning separate, was designed to promote racial segregation and white domination. In 1948, after the Afrikaner National Party’s surprise victory, apartheid was introduced as state policy. The reorganization of civic, economic, and political structures became increasingly violent and penetrated even the most mundane aspects of social existence. The exhibition argues that the rise of the Afrikaner National Party and its introduction of apartheid changed the pictorial perception of the country from a colonial space based on segregation to a highly contested space based on the ideals of equality, democracy, and civil rights. Photography was almost instantaneously alert to this change and transformed its visual language to a social instrument. No one photographed South Africa and the struggle against apartheid better, more critically and incisively, with deep pictorial complexity and penetrating insight, than South African photographers. This exhibition explores and pays tribute to their exceptional photographic achievement. Historic events like the "Treason Trial" of 1956-61 and Nelson Mandela’s 1990 release also appear. The exhibition’s focus, however, is not on the history of apartheid, but rather explores its normative symbols and signs.
Vivid, evocative, and dramatic, "Rise and Fall of Apartheid" features nearly 70 artists and covers more than 60 years of photographic and visual production that form part of the historical record of modern South African identity. With more than 500 photographs, artworks, films, videos, documents, posters, and periodicals, the exhibition is a rich tapestry of materials. Included in the exhibition are works of pioneering South African photographers such as Eli Weinberg, David Goldblatt, Peter Magubane, Jurgen Schadeberg, Sam Nzima, Ernest Cole, and the responses of contemporary artists including Adrian Piper, Hans Haacke, or William Kentridge. The exhibition also features the works of a new generation of South African photographers.
"Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life" is organized by the International Center of Photography, New York in collaboration with Haus der Kunst.
Art information
Staff members answer your questions about the exhibition:
Sa 12 — 5 pm / Su 12 — 5 pm
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Rise and Fall of Apartheid
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Drum Magazine
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Drum Magazine, issue June 1951
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Drum Magazine, issue July 1956
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Drum Magazine, issue June 1957
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Drum Magazine, issue September 1957
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Drum Magazine, issue November 1977
Picture Gallery
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FAZ Article on "Rise and Fall of Apartheid"
Review of the exhibition "Rise and Fall of Apartheid" in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" on March 5, 2013. (In German) MORE
Sir Sidney Kentridge
Interview
An interview with the renowned antiapartheid activist lawyer Sir Sydney Kentridge. He played a leading role in a number of the most significant political trials in apartheid era, including the 1977 inquest of Stephen Biko following his death in custody, was a member of Nelson Mandela's legal team during his 27-year imprisonment, and helped erode the legacy of apartheid laws in South Africa. MORE
Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Bibliography
Bibliography
Extensive bibliography on the subject of apartheid with a focus on photography, fiction and autobiography as well as academic publications. MORE
Rise and Fall of Apartheid - Article in the NY Times
In the press
"Photography is the common language of modern history. It's everywhere; and everyone, in some way, understands it." (The New York Times) MORE
Okwui Enwezor: Rise and Fall of Apartheid
Essay
The essay offers a comprehensive overview of the pictorial response to apartheid in South Africa. MORE
William Kentridge: Tide table
Video
"Tide Table" is one of ten films by South African artist William Kentridge that "Rise and Fall of Apartheid" shows in its own cinema. MORE
Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Interview with Peter Magubane
Interview
Interview with Peter Magubane, one of South Africa’s most distinguished photo journalists. MORE
"Soweto Uprising" – Readymade and photographs
Document
Kendell Geers' readymade "Untitled, 1976" is a mortuary register listing the name of a young boy who was killed during the Soweto Uprising – an event captured also in numerous photographs in the exhibition "Rise and Fall of Apartheid". MORE
Exhibition program on video
Video
A video containing brief visual descriptions of current exhibitions. MORE
The Conditions of Spectrality and Spectatorship in Thomas Ruff's Photographs
Essay
Essay by Okwui Enwezor MORE
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Exhibition 16.11 – 12.12.93
Where women are dying, I am wide awake MORE
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Exhibition 01.02 – 13.04.98
Retrospective MORE
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Exhibition 16.06 – 19.09.04
Bernd and Hilla Becher met in Düsseldorf at the end of the fifties and have been working together since then, for over forty years, on an archive for industrial architecture. Invariably using the neutral background of a grey and cloudless sky, they place their chosen images centre-picture and format-filling. Following previously determined criteria, the photos make up so-called "Typologies". In exhibitions the black and white photographs are arranged into tableaux, thus a screen-like presentation emerges, giving the viewer the opportunity to compare images. MORE
Parrworld
Exhibition 07.05 – 17.08.08
For more than 30 years, Parr has been documenting society and everyday culture, predominantly in his home country Great Britain, but beyond this, he has also documented global phenomena such as mass tourism, consumerist behaviour or so-called leisure time. He is considered to be a satirist of contemporary life; his photographs are unsparingly critical and his inimitable eye unmasks the banal as well as the grotesque. MORE
William Eggleston
Exhibition 20.02 – 17.05.09
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Michael Schmidt
Exhibition 21.05 – 22.08.10
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Thomas Ruff
Exhibition 17.02 – 20.05.12
The exhibition in Haus der Kunst is the first comprehensive presentation of the works of Thomas Ruff in more than ten years. It chronologically tracks his artistic development. MORE
Withholding Images
Essay
Withholding Images MORE
Brassai — From Surrealism to the Informal
Exhibition 21.01 – 26.03.95
An overview of the photographic work of the Hungarian artist MORE