Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography
Live Virtual Auction, 18 September 2024
Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography
About the SessionWays of Seeing: South African and International Photography showcases a collection of works that take a critical approach to photography, layered with themes of personhood, subjectivity and community.
The sale features works from distinct collections by passionate collectors with a discerning eye and deep engagement with art – featuring The Gary Eisenberg Collection, part of the Linda Givon Collection, works from The Photographic Archival and Preservation Association as well as a group of contemporary African artists who have made a significant mark within the medium of photography including, Zanele Muholi, Mary Sibande, Kudzanai Chiurai, Pieter Hugo and Nandipha Mntambo, among others.
With a title that pays homage to a great thinker, John Berger, Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography challenges traditional notions of the gaze, inviting us to engage the human experience through images of nude physical forms, intimate portraits, landscapes and depictions of the environment. The sale is a meditation on the ethics of seeing, often fraught with complexity and contestation.
It highlights the diversity within both local and global photographic traditions through an array of works, with significant contributions from African photographers alongside globally renowned artists such as Bill Brandt (British), Nan Goldin (American), Bettina Rheims (French), Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian), Viviane Sassen (Dutch), Wolfgang Tillmans (German), Joel-Peter Witkin (American), André Kertész (Hungarian), Roman Vishniac (Russian-American), and Youssef Nabil (Egyptian).
A significant portion of Ways of Seeing: South African and International Photography is drawn from The Gary Eisenberg Collection following the tragic and untimely passing of Gary earlier this year. This inclusion comes with immense gratitude from Gary’s wife, Dominique Eisenberg.
About this Item
signed, dated 2016, numbered 1/5 and inscribed with the title in the margin
Exhibited
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, WYE, 2 March to 1 April 2017, another example from the edition exhibited.
Notes
The present lot comes from WYE, Subotzky's first fictional film installation commissioned by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (Sydney) and premiered there in March 2016.
“The overarching structural and conceptual framework of Subotzky’s film installation derives from the letter Y (the phonetically-spelt Old English ‘wye’ of the title), whose shape has traditionally lent itself to a variety of practical applications, from railroad construction to mechanical and electrical engineering. Adapting it for artistic purposes, Subotzky envisages an imaginary cartographic triangle enveloping the United Kingdom, and two of its former colonies, South Africa and Australia, its exterior sides etched by the migration of people over centuries. In drafting a Y shape into the middle of this triangle and elevating it into a third dimension, the artist admits the imaginary space for a new fictional narrative in which these three countries converge across time and space. A narrative structure for WYE is thus harnessed which spans three temporalities – historical, contemporary and futuristic – and three disparate colonial experiences: English, Australian and South African.”1
1. (an edited excerpt from Vibrations in the Landscape: The Imaginary Divinations of Mikhael Subotzky’s WYE by Nina Miall. The full version on SCAF’s Mikhael Subotzky: WYE exhibition catalogue.)
Provenance
The Linda Givon Collection.
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