Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse were named winners of the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography prize!
A series of images capturing the warts and warmth of Africa’s tallest housing block is up for a 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography prize, reported Jeremy Kuper. UPDATE: on Friday 29 May, Subotzky and Waterhouse were declared the winners
South African photographer Mikhael Subotzky is in London where Ponte City, the book he created with British artist Patrick Waterhouse, has been shortlisted for the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography prize. He tells how it was important to change the view of Ponte – Hillbrow’s iconic cylindrical residential tower – as part crime scene, part picture postcard.
“The myth around the building was as interesting as the physical structure itself … the good and the bad. It was built and mythologised to be better than it ever could be. And then in the 1980s and 1990s it was mythologised to be much worse than it ever was,” the former Standard Bank Young Artist award-winner explains.
Subotzky and Waterhouse’s six-year examination of Ponte and its attempted regeneration becomes an allegory for Johannesburg itself: the rise and fall and rise deferred.
“The building is a metaphor for the city, which is a metaphor for the South African condition in the last 30 years,” Subotzky says.
For full interview see Mail & Guardian
See also Muholi’s photographs a vehicle for those seeking sexual freedom
