archival ink print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag

Artwork date: circa 2004
Signature details: signed
Edition: number 1 from an edition of 10

(1)

image size: 23.5 x 36 cm, sheet size: 29.5 x 42 cm, unframed

Notes:

Eric Miller is a widely experienced documentary photographer who has worked extensively in South Africa, throughout Africa and further afield. He started as a photojournalist during the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s, working during that period for the progressive photographers’ collective Afrapix, as well as the Reuters and Associated Press news agencies. In the post-apartheid period, Miller worked across Africa on assignment for many publications in North America and Europe, and was extensively published in publications ranging from Time and Newsweek to newspapers such as The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and others. Currently, his main work focus is on social and human rights issues, working with organisations across a spectrum of issues from HIV/AIDS and TB to general health, working and living conditions on farms, labour, migrant and gender issues. Miller’s clients now include a range of South African and international NGOs. He teaches and mentors young photographers, and also works on self-generated documentary

projects in stills and video. Miller’s work has been published in several books and, together with his wife Laurine Platzky, he completed his first documentary film, the award-winning Hutchinson: SHUNTED. "I was working on a ‘Cape Town’ book. The intention was to produce a book about the people of Cape Town, not the usual sterile co"ee table book of scenic wine farms, wonderful mountains and beach scenes that took scant interest in the people and communities of the city. There were many of those books on bookstore shelves, and at the time, none that focused on the 'who, where and what’ of the people of the city, and their lived realities." With text by Gillian Warren Brown and Yazeed Fakier, Cape Town Uncovered: A People’s City (Double Storey Books, 2005) describes a world class city – vibrant, industrious and entertaining. But it also shows the face of a city riddled with contradictions and inequities, scarred by a racist past and present, resulting in a fragmented society which has alienated many of its residents. This photograph was also published in Then & Now: Eight South African Photographers (Highveld, 2007). As part of the Then and Now exhibition, it has been shown in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Melbourne and Brisbane.