Notes

I decided to do a portrait of a small town, a small South African rural town, looking at the issues of incarceration and social marginalisation … I was interested in how it told a powerful social story by exploring one particular place largely ignored by the outside world. Many of the obscured social dynamics that scar South Africa seem to converge and reveal themselves in transit towns. My idea was to start with a small-town prison and work outwards from it, into the rest of the town. I chose Beaufort West after I learned about the prison being right in the middle of town and, remarkably, in a traffic circle in the middle of the national highway that passes through town. The image of the town radiating out of the prison was what really drew me to work there.

Mikhael Subotzsky

Exhibited

Museum of Modern Art, New York, New Photography 2008: Josephine Meckseper and Mikhael Subotzky, 2008.