Jo Ractliffe: Photographs 1980s-Now - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The first comprehensive overview of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe's politicized landscape portrayals

Looking back over the past 35 years, this book brings together images by Ractcliffe (born 1961) from major photo-essays, as well as early works that have not been seen before.

Described by Okwui Enwezor as "one of the most accomplished and underrated photographers of her generation," Ractliffe started working in the early 1980s, and her photographs continue to reflect her preoccupation with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures in the country's imaginary--particularly the violent legacies of apartheid. In 2007 she extended her interests to the war in Angola and published three photobooks on the aftermath of that conflict and its manifestations in the South African landscape: Terreno Ocupado (2008), As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010) and The Borderlands (2015).

Review Quotes

Jo Ractliffe's expansive new photobook demonstrates how words and pictures bring historical memory into sharp relief.--Nicole Acheampong "Aperture"

A mix of prose, impactful imagery and in-depth, personal cadences...that echo with history and politics-- "PORT Magazine"

A powerful new book brings together over three decades of images from a photographer preoccupied with her native landscape, as the country grappled with the violent consequences of apartheid.-- "The Guardian"