If you’re eye have been caught by the new Matt Damon – Morgan Freeman movie, Invictus, about South Africa’s emergence from apartheid, you should also check out this photographic exhibition about the country.

“Then and Now – Eight South African Photographers presented by Paul Weinberg” is showcasing at the Brisbane Powerhouse from April 8 to May 10 with a collection spanning 50 years of South African history.

The collection is a rather powerful insight into the transition the country has gone through in its road to democracy. Each photographer contributed 20 prints, 10 made under apartheid and 10 made post-apartheid.

The curator, and also a photographic contributor, Paul Weinberg said the project was a dialogue with the eight photographers who have worked in two distinctive periods of South African history.

“… this collection is something of a family gathering – a family with a shared history which has sought to understand South Africa’s changes, contradictions and complexities, both as a community and as individuals”, he said.

The exhibition was first launched in the Albany Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa in 2007 and has since toured to the Durban Art Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. Internationally the collection has gone to Duke University, the Ghent Festival in Belgium and the Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne and to venues in Scandinavia.

It is being presented at the Brisbane Powerhouse to coincide with the Queensland Month of Photography.

Related Posts