silver gelatin print

Artwork date: 2002
Signature details: signed on the reverse
Edition: number 1 from an edition of 3 + 1AP

(1)

image size: 20 x 48 cm, sheet size: 24 x 57 cm, unframed

Notes:

Jo Ractli"e was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and currently lives there. She has held fellowships at the Centre for Curating the Archive, University of Cape Town (2014); Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg (2010); Ampersand Foundation, New York (2008); the Christian Merian Stiftung fellowship at iaab studios, Basel (2001); and the Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Vallais fellowship, Sierre (2001). Ractli"e was nominated for the Discovery Prize at the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival (2011). Her work has been exhibited and published widely, including major exhibitions in France, the Netherlands, Taiwan, UK, Austria, the USA, Germany, and Spain. Recent solo exhibitions include Signs of Life, Stevenson, Cape Town (2019); Hay Tiempo, No Hay Tiempo, Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo, as part of Hacer Noche, Oaxaca (2018); Everything is Everything, Stevenson, Johannesburg (2017); After War, Fondation A Stichting, Brussels (2015); The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractli!e's Photographs of Angola and South Africa, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2015); Someone Else's Country, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (2014); and The Borderlands, Stevenson, Cape Town (2013). Jo Ractli!e: Drives, the first US survey of the photographer’s work, opens at the Art Institute of Chicago in October 2020. Ractli"e’s photo-books include Everything is Everything (2017); The Borderlands (2015); As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010) and Terreno Ocupado (2008). As Terras do Fim do Mundo was shortlisted in the category of Best Photobook of 2010 at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel (2011)."We went on this trip because David was on a mission to find Bute Asbestos Mine. From Kuruman we travelled north, passing through Heuningvlei – a dry ghost of a pan flanking an old mining village that had once boasted swimming pools, tennis courts and picnic areas, now all of it a desolation. We left the chalky dirt road and headed into the landscape. It was hot, still and quiet – each sharp clunk of a rock hitting the car’s undercarriage magnified in the silence. I had a worn-out copy of T. V. Bulpin’s Discovering Southern Africa with me, searching out bits of information – geological formations, early expeditions and mining explorations – as if these would activate something out there, deliver me from the sameness of it all. But when I looked through the window, it was just shiny brown rock, glinting with the blue of asbestos. In this landscape nothing o"ers itself up easily; you have to be patient – and attentive. Sometimes David would point to a mound of rocks, or a shallow pit in the ground; looking closer I would see the remains of an open cast mine or an adit. Then we would discover other things; an old enamel mug or tin bath, traces of past labour. And so we proceeded. Until suddenly, in the middle of a clearing we saw a well. We stopped, and it was as if someone released the ‘pause’ button and the world came back into motion. Two women sat under a tree doing their washing, blankets draped over the bushes nearby like little bright tents. At a distance, three men sat smoking, their dogs stretched out flat and limp in the heat. The air was dense with flickering white butterflies. A group of hobbled donkeys came hopping to the well to drink, later a white cow and her calf, then some goats. And into all this activity, through a cloud of dust, a horseman galloped up to the well. He was wearing huge teardrop sunglasses. Seeing me, he shouted ‘Hey sister!’, and with arms extended like an announcing angel, he slid o" his horse and held the pose. I photographed David photographing him." – Driving with David, Jo Ractli"e (2002).