Documentary Photography in Apartheid and Post - Apartheid South Africa

这个项目调查了南非从种族隔离早期到1994年新民主南非形成期间纪实摄影的发展。它不是通过全面的历史调查，而是通过选择以重要方式塑造媒体使用的关键出版物，组织和摄影师来做到这一点。例如，这项研究针对的是1951年首次出版的插图杂志《鼓》，该杂志向黑人摄影师和观众介绍了一种国际风格的人文主义摄影。同样，它考虑了20世纪80年代在国际国防和援助基金会赞助下创建的摄影集，这是一个“斗争”摄影的时期，政治和文化是不可分割的。摄影通常被认为是“见证”历史或“反映”社会，但这种观点未能解释照片制作和观看的复杂方式，以及各种各样的动机、社会和政治因素，这些因素塑造了照片所提供的世界观。这项研究密切关注照片在其原始环境中，倾听摄影师的声音，试图了解他们如何看待他们正在做的工作，并检查摄影在后种族隔离时代的地位。基于对摄影师和编辑的采访，并通过对收藏和博物馆展出的照片的分析，本研究探讨了摄影在南非世纪后半叶的意义。在研究这一时期南非的独特情况时，预计这项研究将有助于我们更广泛地理解摄影，挑战和扩展有关如何以及为什么要创建纪实摄影记录的现有想法。

This project investigates the development of documentary photography in South Africa from the early years of apartheid to the formation of a new democratic South Africa in 1994. It does so not through a comprehensive historical survey, but by selecting key publications, organisations and photographers that have shaped the use of the medium in significant ways. The research addresses, for example, the illustrated magazine Drum, first published in 1951, which introduced an international style of humanist photography to black photographers and audiences. Similarly, it considers the photographic collection created under the auspices of the International Defense and Aid Fund during the 1980s, a period of 'struggle' photography in which the political and cultural were unavoidably linked.Photography is often believed to 'witness' history or 'reflect' society, but such perspectives fail to account for the complex ways in which photographs get made and seen, and the variety of motivations and social and political factors that shape the vision of the world that photographs provide. This research looks closely at the photographs in their original contexts, listens to the voices of the photographers to try and understand how they viewed the work they were doing, and examines the place of photography in a post-apartheid era. Based on interviews with photographers and editors, and through the analysis of photographs held in collections and displayed in museums, this research addresses the significance of photography in South Africa during the second half of the twentieth century. In researching the unique circumstances of South Africa in this period it is anticipated that the study will contribute to our understanding of photography more broadly, challenging and extending existing ideas about how and why documentary photographic records come to be created.