In Defense of Social Documentary Photography – Portrait and documentary photography in post-apartheid South Africa

This dissertation aims to contribute to an emerging body of critical studies about South Africa‘s visual culture by critically reflecting on the formal nature and uses of documentary and portrait photography in post-apartheid South Africa.

Two motivating engines propel this study: one intends to analyse the documentary role of the camera during the apartheid era, especially with regards to recording not only the atrocities of apartheid but also the relations between people on different sides of the colour bar; the other aims to examine the inter-relationship of the democratisation1 of photography in South Africa with the dawning and maturing of democracy after the fall of apartheid.

A dialogue will be established between the past and the present, and between history, memory and photography.

Below useful texts, also example dissertations

In Defence of Social Documentary Photography in South Africa:

http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/In_Defence_Social_Documentary_Photography.pdf

Politics and Photography in Apartheid South Africa:

https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Apartheid-South-Africa.pdf

Portrait and documentary photography in post-apartheid South Africa: (hi)stories of past and present:

http://research.gold.ac.uk/6491/1/CCS_thesis_Horta_2011.pdf

Introduction to special issue: Documenting photography in South Africa:

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-01902012000100002

Issues of subjectivity and objectivity in regard to documentary photography in the broader context of the mass media :

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/143866133.pdf

Abstract

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