Along with an exhibition, photographer Reiner Leist’s new book of photographs “Another Country” explores signature portraiture, writes Sean O’Toole.
Reiner Leist’s new book of photographs, Another Country, shares the same title as the English-language translation of Karel Schoeman’s 1984 Afrikaans novel ‘n Ander Land. The latter book tells the story of a consumptive Dutch traveller, Versluis, who travels to Bloemfontein in search of remedy.
It first appeared in translation in 1991, when Leist was 27. Unlike Versluis, Leist was in rude health at the time and not bound to a single geographic location during his six-year sojourn in South Africa.
During that time he tenaciously set about meeting and photographing just about every member of the struggle.
Aside from activists Helen Joseph and Amina Cachalia, Leist in 1991 photographed Desmond Tutu inside his Bishopscourt residence and Albertina and Walter Sisulu outside their Orlando West home.
A year later he produced a warm portrait of a round-faced Chis Hani seated in front of the South African Communist Party flag, and the year after that he photographed Nelson Mandela.
Colour portraits
The latter portrait, an austere black-and-white study of a veteran politician on the verge of beatification, appears on the cover of Leist’s new book. Black and white is undeniably Leist’s metier, the new colour portraits that complement his people studies from two decades ago far less impressive.
He often struggles to tame our sharp local daylight. Many of his colour photos, some of the same subjects he met in the early 1990s, are weighted by a fatal dullness, often the outcome of the dun hues of the workplaces he visited to make his recent photos.
Amongst the more striking portraits in a book filled with studies of our political and artistic aristocracy are Leist’s studies of ordinary South Africans. Women like Glory Badirileng Maebela, who he photographed seated outside her home suckling her twins Thereso Evens and Nnete Yvonne in rural Mpumalanga in 1992.
The portrait originally appeared on the cover of his 1996 book, Blue Portraits, which similar to Another Country forged a close link between image and text. Both books feature extensive interviews with their portrait subjects, Leist differentiating his new book by allowing his portrait subjects to look back from now to then.
For the full review by Shaun O’Toole, see Mail & Guardian
Reiner Leist, Another Country – South Africa: New Portraits published by Jacana
Exhibition: Johannesburg Art Gallery until 13 July 2014
