Life Itself: Photography and South Africa

A comprehensive and beautiful survey of South African photography.

From colonialism to democracy, Life Itself offers a comprehensive overview of South Africa’s photographic history. Featuring images from the heyday of Drum magazine and Black emergence to Peter Magubane’s Soweto uprising pictures, David Goldblatt’s In Boksburg to the photographers’ collective Afrapix and the struggles for freedom, this book concludes with post-apartheid documentary and art photography in the work of Andrew Tshabangu, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, and others. Life Itself helps to fill a gap in our understanding of the role of the camera in South African society.

Simon A. Clarke is a senior lecturer at Falmouth University. His previous books include Print: Fashion, Interiors, Art.