(Photography, Place, Environment) 1st Edition
by Nicola Brandt (Author)
In Landscapes Between Then and Now,
Nicola Brandt examines the increasingly compelling and diverse
cross-disciplinary work of photographers and artists made during the
transition from apartheid to post-apartheid and into the contemporary
era.
By examining specific artworks made in South Africa,
Namibia and Angola, Brandt sheds light on established and emerging
themes related to aftermath landscapes, embodied histories,
(un)belonging, spirituality and memorialization. She shows how landscape
and identity are mutually constituted, and profiles this process
against the background of the legacy of the acutely racially divisive
policies of the apartheid regime that are still reflected on the land.
As a signpost throughout the book, Brandt draws on the work of the
renowned South African photographer Santu Mofokeng and his critical
thinking about landscape.
Landscapes Between Then and Now
explores how practitioners who engage with identity and their physical
environment as a social product might reveal something about the complex
and fractured nature of postcolonial and contemporary societies.
Through diverse strategies and aesthetics, they comment on inherent
structures and epistemologies of power whilst also expressing new and
radical forms of self-determinism. Brandt asks why these
cross-disciplinary works ranging from social documentary to experimental
performance and embodied practices are critical now, and what important
possibilities for social and political reflection and engagement they
suggest.
