Darren Newbury. Defant Images: Photography and Apartheid South Africa. Foreword by ALbie Sachs. Pretoria, South Africa: Unisa Press, 2009. xxiii + 345 pp. $37.00, paper, ISBN 978-1-86888-523-7.

Reviewed by Pamela Allara

Published on H-AfrArts (September, 2012)

Commissioned by Jean M. Borgatti (Clark Univeristy)

In his forward to this survey text, juror Albie graphic ideas and practices that were self-con‐ Sachs writes that “the bulk of the book in fact sciously both modern and international, and yet deals more with the defant and innovative repre‐ at the same time thoroughly South African” (p. 3). sentation of the ordinary, than with the ordinary Although the phrase ”thoroughly South African” depiction of the heroic” (p. viii). This felicitous may sound as meaningless as ”authentically statement summarizes the author’s approach African,” Newbury is diligent in sorting out the re‐ rather neatly. The book’s title suggests that the lationships between South African documentary analysis will concentrate on struggle photography photography and the Western practices in which in particular and photography with a political it was often rooted. Thus the book provides a con‐ agenda in general, but that is not the case. Rather text absent from the now standard texts on this it attempts to trace a history of photojournalism subject: South Africa: the Cordoned Heart (1986) in South Africa. Newbury, a professor of photogra‐ and Beyond the Barricades: Popular Resistance in phy at Birmingham City University, examines doc‐ South Africa (1989). Although his goal is a book umentary images that addressed race relations documenting “photography against apartheid” from 1948 through 1994, with attention paid also (by which I take to mean the visual depiction of to the use of those images to structure memory in the black experience in South African society), the the post-apartheid era. In addition, as a Western author acknowledges that there are many other academic, he is interested in providing the inter‐ histories of this period that could be written (p. 8). national context for South African documentary Given the book’s title and stated goal, it is a images. As he writes: “I want to reconsider the bit disconcerting that the frst photographer’s documentary tradition in South Africa, not as an work to be discussed in detail is that of Constance authentically African tradition, whatever that Stuart Larrabee. Criticized by South African histo‐ may mean, but rather as a complex set of photo‐ rian Brenda Danilovitz and others for removing H-Net Reviews her photographs of tribal peoples from history infuential 1996 Gugggenheim Museum exhibition and framing them as “beautiful objects,” Larrabee “In/Sight: African Photographers 1940 to the consistently denied that her work carried any po‐ Present,” that because of the paternalism of the litical meaning, and indeed fretted that her photo‐ frst issues, the Johannesburg Drum had to essen‐ graphs might be interpreted as a criticism of the tially start over from scratch. By providing exam‐ apartheid regime (as Newbury concedes).[1] His ples of stories in each early issue, Newbury ar‐ discussion of Larrabee’s images of black urban gues that the transition from the Cape Town pub‐ life in the 1930s--“Johannesburg Black Man”--is in‐ lication to the Johannesburg Drum was a gradual dicative of the interpretative tightrope Newbury one. Nonetheless, he undermines his own argu‐ must walk in setting out the origins of South ment when he concludes that Drum was “visually African documentary photography. This lesser and ideological distinct” from The African Drum. known aspect of her work includes some of the Because in 1951, there were few black South earliest images of this important subject, but it ex‐ African photographers, “a new South African pho‐ cludes the darker problems of poverty and illness, tography had literally to be created” from the frst and was guided by “an ideology of trusteeship” “faltering steps” of tAfrican Drum (p. 109). That (p. 38). Larrabee was “trapped in a vision of a radical task is the subject of the following chapter. white universe and unable to conceptualize an al‐ Chapter 3, “‘Johannesburg Lunch Hour’: Pho‐ ternative social structure to the existing reality” tographic Humanism and the Social Vision of (p. 42). While providing a layered and complex Drum,” traces the beginnings of a black vision for analysis of Larrabee’s urban work, Newburg con‐ black experience as rooted in the emerging prac‐ cedes that it was a “false dawn for a critical docu‐ tice of South African photojournalism. Although mentary tradition” (p. 8). the magazine was aimed at the de-tribalized Leon Levson, (d. 1968), the subject of the sec‐ African, Drum’s editorship remained white, but ond half of this frst chapter, occupies the same sufciently enlightened that the German expatri‐ equivocal position. Although his work was collect‐ ate photographer Jürgen Schadeberg could insist ed by the London-based International Defence on mentoring the frst generation of black photo‐ And Aid Fund for Southern Africa in the 1980s, journalists, among them Bob Gosani and Peter when the fund was the repository for banned Magubane. The new urban focus highlighted po‐ struggle images, the photographs’ activist message litical fgures (all 156 people accused in the Trea‐ was projected by the captions provided by his son Trial of 1957 were pictured), while also pro‐ wife Freda, the politically engaged half of the cou‐ viding more sensationalized stories of crime. Per‐ ple. haps the most well known of the stories against In chapter 2, “‘A Fine Thing’: The African apartheid is Gosani’s “Mr. Drum Goes to Jail” Drum,” Newbury’s text, like the images he discuss‐ (March, 1954), which, despite its stunning depic‐ es, is forced to equivocate. Founded in March, tion of the degrading tausa dance, argued in its 1951, in Cape Town, The African Drum changed tepid text only for a more thoroughgoing inspec‐ its name to Drum when it moved to Johannesburg tion of the prison system. By 1956, under the four months later. In this and the following chap‐ fourth editor, Tom Hopkinson from Britain, the ter, Newbury provides the frst detailed history of sequenced photo-essay became more prominent, the two phases of the magazine and argues that establishing a three-way relationship with the the Cape Town issues opened the way for the photographic humanism characteristic of Western more radical publication to follow. In this, he news magazines such as Picture Post and Life: “an wants to counter the argument presented in the articulation of photographic realism, the notion of the ‘ordinary’ African and a liberal reformist poli‐

2 H-Net Reviews tics” (p. 151). (Sachs’s introductory comment on photography, was infuenced heavily by ideas and the defant representation of the ordinary is practices imported from Europe and the US. echoed here.) The chapter concludes with the jar‐ House of Bondage moved in the opposite direc‐ ring juxtaposition of Edward Steichen’s “Family of tion, representing therefore the refraction of Man” exhibition in South Africa (1958) with the these ideas through the lens of apartheid South Drum’s images of the Sharpeville Massacre of Africa, and their return to the West. Read in this 1960. Countering the well-known criticism by way, House of Bondage is an antidote to Steichen’s Roland Barthes that the humanism of the “Family Family of Man” (p. 175). of Man” exhibition was really a matter of colonial‐ Unfortunately, Newbury struggles to support ism, Newbury argues that in the South African this argument. Because of the lack of archival doc‐ context, humanist photography (as infuenced by umentation on Cole, Newbury must speculate Western photojournalism in the 1940s and1950s), about how much infuence the four New York was the “servant of black African cultural expres‐ Times essays Cole published with journalist sion” because it depicted “images of urban Joseph Lelyveld and the introduction to House of Africans as irrepressibly human, as actors on Bondage by Life editor Thomas Flaherty may have their own account for both good and evil” (pp. had on the book, especially as it was directed ulti‐ 158-159). Because the concept of photographic hu‐ mately to a Western audience. Fortunately, the manism is so central to his argument, I wish that power of the images that are reproduced serve to the author had taken the time to provide a more support his argument that the book represents extended discussion of the term than appears in “an authentic black South African voice” (p. 174). the text. The concluding discussion of Ian Barry’s Chapter 5, “An Aesthetic of Fists and Flags: and Peter Magubane’s photographs of the Struggle Photography,” again takes the reader Sharpeville Massacre concentrates on the editor’s down an unexpected path. Some of the familiar responses and the fact that with the imposition of players are barely mentioned (Paul Weinberg, a state of emergency, South African documentary Santu Mofokeng), as Newbury chooses instead to photography would have to be published abroad trace the roots of activist photography in the work from that point forward. of a forerunner, Eli Weinberg. Although a contem‐ With chapter 4, “An ‘Unalterable Blackness’: porary of Levson, Weinberg was a true activist, Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage,” we arrive at the and his book Portrait of the People: A Personal heart of the book. If the text to this point has dealt Photographic Record of the South African Libera‐ with ordinary black experience as seen through tion Struggle, published by the IDAF in 1981, the the lens of white photographers, or in the exam‐ year before the Culture and Resistance confer‐ ple of Drum, through the editing by whites of pho‐ ence in Gabarone, became the foundation of “the tography by blacks, House of Bondage is a book international anti-apartheid movement’s visual devoted to the vision of one black photographer. archive” (p. 220). Because the greater part of the However, even here the question of mediation on chapter is devoted to Weinberg’s lesser known im‐ the part of whites in a position of authority can‐ ages of defance, the discussion of the photo‐ not be avoided. Newbury makes the following graphs assembled in South Africa: The Cordoned claim for House of Bondage, assembled from pho‐ Heart (1986) and Beyond the Barricades (1989) is tographs smuggled out in 1966 when Cole moved necessarily truncated. Nonetheless, Newbury pro‐ to New York, and published in Canada in 1967: “I vides a solid analysis of the importance of each of have argued earlier that the photographic human‐ these iconic texts. ism that took root in South Africa in the 1950s, and which provided the initial context for Cole’s

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Chapter 6, “‘Lest We Forget’: Photography and to posit a complete break from the political work the Presentation of History in the Post-apartheid of the 1980s to the personal explorations of the Museum,” examines the complexities of the mem‐ post-apartheid era, the documentary impulse re‐ ory boom in South Africa today. In discussing the mains strong. “The veracity of the photographic central place of the photograph in the Apartheid images continues to be invoked to give a sense of Museum, the Hector Pieterson Museum, the Dis‐ urgency and moral obligation to the depiction of trict Six Museum, and Constitution Hill, Newbury social inequalities; and the link between repre‐ worries with some justifcation that there is a sentation and responsibility, between seeing and danger that the photographs may “come to be acting, forged in the struggle years, is still a signif‐ seen as demonstration of the achievement of so‐ icant dimension of documentary practice in South cial justice rather than part of a wider, and as yet Africa” (p. 319). In this he is part of a shift in inter‐ incomplete, process of transformation” (p. 274). In pretation that began after the frst decade of addition, he notes that the presentation and inter‐ democracy. When Paul Weinberg’s edited antholo‐ pretation of documentary images at the Apartheid gy, Then & Now: Eight South African Photogra‐ Museum are directed primarily at a tourist audi‐ phers, was frst published in 2007, the broad aim ence, and therefore do not generate needed dia‐ was to highlight the new directions taken by the logue. These and other issues raised in this fnal struggle photographers post-1990. However, in chapter are among the most important contribu‐ anticipation of Newbury’s text, art historian tions of the book. Michael Godby noted that “The same drive for a Defant Imagesis meticulously researched and better society that fuelled the earlier work is ap‐ provides the reader with a historical overview of parent in many of the [photo] essays.... And the South African documentary photography that ar‐ same need in Struggle times to present their sub‐ gues for a consistent humanistic core that over jects as rounded human beings rather than vic‐ time permitted a South African voice to emerge, tims or ciphers still inspires these photographers while a foreign audience was made aware of the still inspires these photographers to engage with multiple, daily oppressions of the apartheid the humanity of their subjects.”[2] regime. The undeniable infuence of documentary It appears that this humanistic approach to traditions in the West as well as that of white edi‐ the photography of the ordinary will be presented tors and photographers who were not South in the forthcoming exhibition, “The Rise and Fall African complicates the picture of the nature of of Apartheid Photography and the Bureaucracy of the South African voice. More than any text that I Everyday Life,” which will open at New York’s In‐ know of, Newbury brings the internationalism of ternational Center of Photography in mid-Septem‐ photojournalism to the fore and investigates its ber. According to the press release, “This photo‐ ramifcations for images rooted in the South graphic exhibit examines the legacy of the African experience. Of course, his own perspec‐ apartheid system and how it penetrated even the tive is that of a white, British photographic histo‐ most mundane aspects of social existence in rian, but Newbury manages to maintain a bal‐ South Africa.”[3] Newbury’s chapters on Drum anced approach that quietly insists that photogra‐ and House of Bondage should provide a useful phy can never be fully transparent, but is always background for the ongoing legacy of apartheid as mediated. interpreted by curators Okwui Enwezor and Rory A second important reason for bringing this Bester. However, it will be interesting to see how history up to the present as he does in the fnal much weight, if any, they give to a fraught theme chapter is that although the literature has tended of Defant Images: that of the central role played by white editors and photographers, many of

4 H-Net Reviews whom were not South African, in the develop‐ ment of documentary photography from 1948 to 1990. Notes [1]. Brenda Danilovitz, “Constance Stuart Larrabee’s Photographs of the Ndzundza Ndebele: Performance and History beyond the Modernist Frame,” in Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910-1994, ed. Marion Arnold and Brenda Schmahmann (London: Ash‐ gate, 2005). [2]. Paul Weinberg, ed.,Then & Now: Eight South African Photographers, intro. Michael God‐ by, 2nd ed. (Johannesburg: The Highveld Press, 2008), 13. [3].“This Week’s News: Rise and Fall of Apartheid at ICP New York.” Art South Africa Weekly, http://www.artsouthafrica.com/? news=638&utm_source=GraphicMail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=NewsletterLink&utm_campaign=Week33_16%20August%202012&u

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Citation: Pamela Allara. Review of Newbury, Darren. Defant Images: Photography and Apartheid South Africa. H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews. September, 2012.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36395

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