5th Nov, 2020 19:00
Aspire X PLP | African Photography Auction 2020
53
Graeme Williams (South Africa 1961-)
Springfontein, 2006 (from the The Edge of Town series)
archival ink print on Photo Rag
Artwork date: 2006
Signature details: signed and editioned
Edition: number 2 from an edition of 5
archival ink print on Photo Rag
Artwork date: 2006
Signature details: signed and editioned
Edition: number 2 from an edition of 5
(1)
image size: 66 x 91 cm, framed size: 85 x 110 cm
Notes:
For thirty years Graeme Williams has worked on highly personal photographic essays. Photographic assignments have taken him to fifty countries and his photographs have been published in major publications, including National Geographic magazine, Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times Magazine. His work is housed in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington; Duke University, Durham; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts, Florida; and the University of South Africa, Pretoria. Williams’ work has been shown in solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, Cape Town and Johannesburg, and he has participated in many international group exhibitions, including the 2011 Figures and Fictions exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He was awarded the Contemporary African Photography (CAP) Prize as well as the Ernest Cole Award for the series, A City Refracted, in 2013. In 2014, his work was included in a major exhibition showcasing South African photography at Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, and in the Aperture Summer Open exhibition in New York. Images from his series, As the Grass Grows, were included in the Louis Vuitton Foundation’s Being There exhibition in 2017. Lot 53 is from the series The Edge of Town. "My initial motivation for the project was to capture a segment of South African life as the country’s struggled to find a new post-apartheid identity. My own reactions to the changes happening around me were mixed and often jarring. Instead of trying to construct a narrative about life in the country as a whole, I concentrated on fragments of life at the literal and figurative edges of town. It is a stream of consciousness that attempts to draw in the elements of both change and lack of change within this paradoxical country.This essay, like a mosaic, is made up of fragments that I have collected as I moved within the spaces occupied by South Africa’s marginalised communities. These fragments build a picture of the challenges, changes, frustrations and joys experienced by people who are attempting to move from the shadows into the centre stage of South African life." The Edge of Town was published by Once-O" Publications (2007).
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Auction: Aspire X PLP | African Photography Auction 2020, 5th Nov, 2020
A collection of pan-African works, straddling the terrain between historical and contemporary photography, were auctioned to support the digitisation of African photographic legacies by the Photography Legacy Project (PLP). Bidders participated from across Europe, the USA and UK, Asia, Australia and Africa – a testament to Aspire’s increasing global reach and collectors’ enthusiasm for African photography.
The auction included photographic luminaries such as David Goldblatt, Alf Kumalo, G.R. Naidoo, Ranjith Kally and Ian Berry, as well as more contemporary internationally acclaimed photographers like Guy Tillim, Jo Ractliffe, Syowia Kyambi and Mikhael Subotzky. The lead lot, a portfolio of 12 silver gelatin prints from the legendary photographer Ernest Cole’s seminal 1967 book House of Bondage sold for an astounding R569,000 – a new world auction record.
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