Sabelo Mlangeni
At Home/Ghost Towns
This catalogue brings together two related bodies of black and white photographs by Sabelo Mlangeni. At Home (taken between 2004 and 2009) focuses on rural areas where breadwinners have migrated away in search of work, leaving behind the young and the old. These places, where many urban immigrants have their roots, are portrayed as spaces of waiting, seen through the filter of memory. The villages possess a distinct tranquility and spaciousness even though there is poor sanitation, teenage pregnancy, lack of basic information and an increasing number of orphans. The Ghost Towns series (2009-2011) depicts small South African towns that have been abandoned and forgotten, left on the edge of nowhere, while transformation takes place in the country's urban areas. At the centre of the catalogue, Sean O'Toole considers Mlangeni's 'understated essays' in a piece titled 'Impressions of a residual world'.
Published by Stevenson | Catalogue 59, October 2011
Softcover, 76 pages | Unavailable
