Beaufort West

Year 2008
Editor/Write Mikhael Subotzky
Contributors Jonny Steinberg
ISBN 978-1-905712-11-3
Publisher Chris Boot Ltd
Price R700.01 incl. VAT

At the half-way point along South Africa’s great highway – the N1 running from Cape Town to Johannesburg – lies the small town of Beaufort West. With its prison in the middle of town, on an island in the highway, it’s a surreal road-stop that offers everything a traveller might want – food, gas, a place to stay, an hour of sex… Mikhael Subotzky considers the town, its vivid characters and poignant social landscapes, in a photo essay that confronts central issues of contemporary South African society. His first photobook, it is exquisitely produced on a large portfolio scale.

I am not me, the horse is not mine

Year 2008
Artist William Kentridge
Editor/Write William Kentridge
Contributors Phillip Miller, Sue Pam-Grant
ISBN 9780620425629
Publisher Goodman Gallery
Price R280.00 incl. VAT

I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine (a Russian peasant expression used to deny guilt) contains a series of essays, lecture notes and commentary by William Kentridge on the eight films and performance event that was first presented to international acclaim at the Sydney Biennale, 2008. The event comprises a multi-channel projection installation of eight film fragments entitled I am not me, the horse is not mine. Based on the absurdist short story, The Nose (1837), by Nikolai Gogol, the installation promises to keep audiences transfixed with its mixture of self-reflective fragments, absurd cut-outs, instrumental and vocal soundscapes and projections.

Kith, Kin & Khaya

Year 2010
Artist David Goldblatt
Editor/Write David Goldblatt
Contributors Ingrid Sischy
ISBN 978-0-9869749-0-8
Publisher Goodman Gallery
Price R390.01 incl. VAT

Kith, Kin and Khaya brings together a selection of black-and-white photographs, ranging from David Goldblatt’s early work of the late-1940s, through seminal essays like On the Mines (with Nadine Gordimer, 1973), Boksburg (1982) and South Africa: The Structure of Things Then (1998), to the most recent images of 2010. The book was published on the occasion of an exhibition of Goldblatt works at the Jewish Museum, New York (2 May–Sep 2010) and the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town (November 2010–Feb 2011).

Soweto

Year 2010
Editor/Write Jodi Bieber
Contributors Niq Mhlongo
ISBN 978-177009-806-0
Publisher Jacana Media
Price R320.00 incl. VAT

Acclaimed home-grown photographer, Jodi Bieber has created an open-ended essay which is a celebration and a portrait of life in Soweto today. The importance of Soweto in the collective consciousness is hard to overstate. It registers as a place born of resistance, perhaps even embodying the South African struggle for freedom. But the birth of Kwaito is attributed to Soweto too. And beyond the grand narratives, there is and always was a proliferation of dancing, art and fashion in this place defined by its energy and cosmopolitan nature. Labelling and un-labelling, claiming and discarding, Sowetans have created Soweto anew – a phenomenon that is celebrated in this photographic publication which contemplates daily lived realities, where here, as elsewhere, South Africans are continually reinventing themselves and their urban space.

The Black President

Year 2010
Editor/Write Kudzanai Chiurai
Contributors Jason
ISBN 978-0-9869749-3-9
Publisher Goodman Gallery
Price R250.00 incl. VAT

The Black President: Vol.2 is a magazine style publication presented by artist Kudzanai Chiurai, with contributions by leading creatives. Produced by the Lines publication team – who were responsible for the catalogue/magazine that accompanied Chiurai’s solo show Yellow Lines in 2008 – The Black President: Vol.2 offers a collection of writing and visual art from across Africa and the Diaspora. Featured contributors include Avant Car Guard, Blatch, Bongani Madono, Charles Nhamo Rupare, Chris Saunders, Emory Douglas, Dylan Lloyd, Faith47, Givan Lotz, Jclanquetin, Judd Van Rensburg & Des Tak, Khaya Sibiya, Lamelle Shaw, Lisa-Anne Julien, M18j92t, Masello Motana, Meresia Gabriel, Mkay & Sanele Xole, Mphutlane Wa Bofelo, Neo Rakgajane, Paul Miller, Smiso Zwane, Zac ‘Host’ Modirapula and Xander Ferreira.

TJ/Double Negative

Year 2010
Editor/Write David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislavic
Contributors
ISBN 9781415201282
Publisher Umuzi
Price R1,000.01 incl. VAT

TJ/Double Negative is a duo-edition – part photo-essay and part fiction – by photographer David Goldblatt and novelist Ivan Vladislavic. The edition features a book of photographs of Johannesburg by Goldblatt and a new novel by Vladislavic. In the introduction to his book Goldblatt writes that ‘Johannesburg is a fragmented city. It is not a place of smoothly integrated parts. And it has a name that does not roll easily off the tongue.’ Commencing in 1948, Goldblatt’s masterful lens probes, documents, and comments on life over six decades in this incomparable African city. Selected from a massive body of work, this focused distillation presents a unique pictorial history of the city. Accompanying TJ in a sleeved set beautifully produced in Italy, is Vladislavic’s Double Negative. In the novel a young man in Johannesburg receives from a senior photographer an induction into the intricate nature of photography and artistic representation. ‘If,’ he says, ‘I try to imagine the lives going on in all these houses, the domestic dramas, the family sagas, it seems impossibly complicated. How could you ever do justice to something so rich in detail? You couldn’t do it in a novel, let alone a photograph.’