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Book review: Seeing the land

I am thrilled to have received my own copy of Landscapes between Then and Now: Recent Histories in Southern African Photography, Performance and Video Art by Nicola Brandt (Bloomsbury 2020), writes Alex Dodd.

“I did an early edit of the manuscript and learnt a lot in the process, not just about photography in relation to space and place, but about the history of the southern African region. As a Namibian artist and writer, Brandt brings a unique perspective to bear on the entangled histories we share across national borders and time.

Nicola Brandt (Photo: Lewis Watts)

I particularly appreciated the chapter entitled ‘Namibia’s War of Independence: Power, Knowledge and Amnesia’, in which she explores John Liebenberg’s Grave Site at Uupindi and Jo Ractliffe’s As Terras do Fim do Mundo.

As a South African who lived through the years of the apartheid regime’s secret border wars, learning of the violence that was unleashed on the people of Angola and Namibia is a lifelong process of painful uncovering for me.

‘South Africa pursued ruthless counter-insurgency operations as part of its total strategy against Frontline-States and the liberation movements that they accommodated.’ (Marion Wallace: A History of Namibia: From the Beginning to 1990, Oxford University Press, 2014)

As Brandt writes, ‘The works under discussion in this chapter … form part of the established tradition of aftermath photography; they capture the haunting pull of an opaque war, still inscribed on the land, and represent a significant departure from direct record making; their work is done in the wake of traumatic pasts and poses questions about the relationship of the past to the future.’

I also value the book’s present and future-mindedness and the introduction it provides to the work of a younger generation of socially engaged multimedia artists, like Kitso Lynn Lelliot, Isabel Katjavivi, Kiluanji Kia Henda and others.”

Purchase the book directly from the publishers, Routledge
Or talk to the Book Lounge, where we like to buy all our books.

Kiluanji Kia Henda, Untitled, from ‘Balumuka – Ambush’, 2010
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Untitled, from ‘Balumuka – Ambush’, 2010.
The monument in the photograph depicts the 16th century Angolan female warrior Nzingha, which was being temporarily stored at a fort in Luanda: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nzinga_of_Ndongo_and_Matamba 
Nicola Brandt, The Reiterdenkmal’s new location in the courtyard of the Alte Feste, 16 August 2014
Nicola Brandt, The Reiterdenkmal’s new location in the courtyard of the Alte Feste,
16 August 2014
John Liebenberg: The grave site at Uupindi photographed a few weeks after the burial of Swapo guerrillas, with shallow graves in the background and an omwandi tree, from ‘The Crucifixion’, 1989

John Liebenberg: The grave site at Uupindi photographed a few weeks after the burial of Swapo guerrillas, with shallow graves in the background and an omwandi tree,
from ‘The Crucifixion’, 1989
Kiluanji Kia Henda: Under the Silent Eye of Lenin, 2017. Installation wood sculpture, feather and video (single channel, 7 minutes)

Kiluanji Kia Henda: Under the Silent Eye of Lenin, 2017. Installation wood sculpture, feather and video (single channel, 7 minutes)
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