Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

[vimeo video_id="94960698" width="1000" height="563“] This piece of work from Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse mirrors Ponte City, the apartment building that towers over Johannesburg, South Africa. Ponte City has now become a symbol for urban decay, metaphorically standing for all that ails the new, post-apartheid society. Right around the time when developers attempted to “revitalize” the building (talking about gentrification), Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse went to Ponte City to document it. They photographed every door and the view from every window. Subotzky and Waterhouse combine photography, historical archives, found objects, and interviews to create a body of work that spans the pre-history of the building, its spectacular decline, and the recent attempts at its transformation. The building is cast as the central character in a tangled narrative about Johannesburg’s magnetic pull on people from all over the continent. However you want to look at it, you’re essentially not looking at one story, you’re looking at multiple ones. Abandoned apartments, with material left behind by those long gone; a ruin – or not quite ruin – of the past; the transition from one regime to another; immigration; wealth and the lack thereof; and so on. The book isn’t a book, it’s a book in a box that also contains 17 separate booklets. The booklets themselves each focus on one particular aspect, be it an essay, or selections from the different types of materials. www.subotzkystudio.com