Living Apart : South-Africa under Apartheid (version anglaise) [Anglais] [Relié]

Berry, an Englishman who first made his way to South Africa as a teenager, has spent four decades documenting ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. After photographing the Sharpeville riots of 1960--a pivotal event--he elected to concentrate not on "the violent concentration between black and white, but the society that gave cause to it." His efforts to get "under the skin" of that tense society have resulted in a rich and enlightening chronicle of segregation that recalls the powerful photojournalism of W. Eugene Smith.

Before being invited to become a member of the prestigious Magnum photography collective, Berry came to South Africa in 1956 as a 17-year-old Englishman with no awareness of apartheid, South Africa's politics, or its history. He found that apartheid permeated all of South African life. The young photojournalist saw the visual world constructed by that racial framework to be grotesque and fascinating and captured it on film, building a valuable record of the daily horror of apartheid. Overall, this very subjective book offers an inevitably grim look at South Africa's journey from white rule to majority rule. But its chronological layout, moving from hopelessness to hope, makes its black-and-white photographs a useful and perhaps unique visual evolution for researchers. Recommended for most collections.?David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Both a graphic history and a stunning art book, this huge, handsome volume showcases the work of a great photojournalist whose black-and-white pictures bear witness to the truth of South Africa over more than 40 years. Berry's photos of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre are here (horrifying images of police shooting fleeing crowds of people), and there are hundreds more pictures that show individuals in the squatter camps, on the segregated beaches, on the streets of Johannesburg now. There are black and white people separate and together, living apart in the same place. In a matter-of-fact, quiet, personal voice, Berry comments on how it was and how it has changed; a detailed chronology fills in the background facts. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who now heads the Truth Commission in South Africa, talks in his foreword about Berry's pictures as indictment and essential record. Display this book where people can stop and look. Hazel Rochman