Santu Mofokeng: Stories
Smartfox Books Code: PR39355
$921.00 AUD
Approx $569.18 USD
Approx $569.18 USD
Heralded for his nuanced and penetratingly ambivalent portrayals of township life in South Africa, Santu Mofokeng fi rst made his name as a
member of the Afrapix collective, then as a documentary photographer for the African Studies Institute at Wits University, and fi nally as
an independent artist. This groundbreaking series of publications is the result of an unlikely multi-year collaboration between the
photographer, bookmaker Lunetta Bartz, editor/curator Joshua Chuang and Gerhard Steidl. Together they have carefully mined and distilled
over 30 years of work into 18 defi nitive "stories" that are sharply edited, simply presented and richly printed in an oversized format that
recalls the golden age of picture magazines. The stories range in subject from the zealous expressiveness found in "Train Church" and "Pedi
Dancers," and Mofokeng's complex, long-form depiction of late-twentieth-century indentured servitude in "Labor Tenancies," to the contested
spaces of "Robben Island," "Trauma," "Landscapes" and "Billboards." The majority of the pictures appears here for the fi rst time. Taken
together, they reveal the achievement of a major artist of, and for, our times.