by Carolyn on May 9th, 2012
Evette Weyers se boek, Wat die hart van vol is, is deels dagboek, outobiografie en reisjoernaal, wat ryklik met foto’s geïllustreer is. Dit vertel die verhaal van haar kunstenaarskap en haar verhouding met haar man, die akteur Marius Weyers.
Cas van Rensburg het by die Weyers-egpaar in die Kogelbiosfeer naby Hermanus gaan kuier en uitgevind dat Evette inspirasie put uit die natuur, haar “oermatriks”, en woorde waarvan sy die oorsprong en betekenis noukeurig naspoor:
Emoyeni. Dit is die naam van die huis waarin Evette en Marius Weyers in die Kogelbiosfeer naby Hermanus woon. Dit is ’n saamgestelde Zoeloe- en Xhosa-woord wat “in die wind” of “in die gees” beteken, en dalk gepas, want dit is hier dat Evette haar beelde maak en Marius sy woorde leer en die kreatiwiteit dwarrel.
Vandag is dit egter windstil. Marius kom op die stoep langs met ’n wasgoedmandjie in die arms.
Dié keer is die onus nie op hom nie, maar op Evette. Sý dagtaak wag in die waskamer. Die honde kom eerste hek toe om te groet, en Marius sê: “Wag eers dat hulle jou ruik.” Die groot rifrug, Tookwie (dit is ’n Khoi-woord vir “donderende reën”), styg behoorlik bo die hek uit terwyl Paljas, ’n straatnommer, onderlangs snuif.
Lees ‘n lekker lang uittreksel uit Wat die hart van vol is, wat met foto’s aangevul word:
Verhoudings herinner my aan ysberge – nege-tiendes verborge onder die oppervlakte. Ek het ’n hele reeks beelde van ysberge gemaak. Een van Tsjekof se dramas en een van Goethe se gedig oor die Elwekoning wat die ylende kind kom haal. Nog een van my en Marius. Dit was gebaseer op ons goeie verhouding, ten spyte van ons uiteenlopende geaardhede. Ek voel ons kyk in verskillende rigtings, maar ons handpalms raak aan mekaar. Ons staan rug aan rug en maak mekaar sterk. Die nege-tiendes onder die oppervlakte van ons ysberg is propvol liefde, paradokse, respek, tergery, verdraagsaamheid, kontraste, aweregse humor, ’n bietjie woede en nog tergery. Marius het van die liefdesgedigte waarvan ons baie hou, op die ysberg-beeld geskryf; onder andere Marlize Joubert se “Ballade van die minnaars”. Een van die liefdesgedigte van Pablo Neruda is ook op die ysberg geskryf. Ons het dit in Spaans geleer en dra dit saam voor terwyl ons soggens oefeninge doen. (Ons noem dit grappenderwys ons “paringsritueel”, want ons doen die oefeninge teenoor mekaar, soos in ’n spieëlbeeld van mekaar.) Marius het die beeld van ons liefdes-ysberg herdoop na “Wie sal my kan sê hoe díép die liefde lê”.
Spies, skild.
In ’n Chinese verhaal van drie eeue voor Christus probeer ’n man ’n spies en skild verkoop. Mense vra hom hoe sterk sy spies is. “Dit kan enige skild deurboor,” is die antwoord. Nou wil hulle weet hoe sterk sy skild is, en hy sê dit kan alle spiesaanvalle weerstaan. “Wat sal dan gebeur as hierdie spies hierdie skild tref?” vra iemand. Daarop het die man geen antwoord nie.
Terloops: Die Chinese woord vir paradoks het uit hierdie storie ontstaan. Letterlik vertaal, is dit “spies-skild”.
Boekbesonderhede
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by Chiara on Mar 15th, 2012
This year’s shortlist for the 2012 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards is surprisingly devoid of South African nominees. Last year, David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative made us proud by winning the prize for Best Photography Book.
This year’s award is split into two categories – Best Photography Book and Best Moving Image Book – and includes an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing award which this year went to Dewi Lewis.
While no South Africans appeared on these lists, one local book, Santu Mofokeng: Chasing Shadows, received special commendation by featuring in the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards Exhibition. The exhibition showcases the most highly recommended books selected by the judging panel Lindsey Stewart (Chair), Gerry Badger and Gem Southam.
Read the Press release and award shortlist:
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The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation today reveals the shortlists for the Best Photography Book Award and the Best Moving Image Book Award of 2012. The winners will be announced during the Sony World Photography Awards at the London Hilton, Park Lane, London, on Thursday 26 April 2012.
On the same night, an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Award will be presented to UK publisher Dewi Lewis. The inaugural National Media Museum First Book Award, in partnership with MACK, will also be presented by the Foundation.
Best Photography Book Award Shortlist
Selected by judges Lindsey Stewart (Chair), Gerry Badger and Jem Southam
Blind, Sophie Calle (Actes Sud)
“In this work the conceptual artist, Sophie Calle, brings together three series of photographs dating from 1986, 1991 and 2010, each exploring aspects of blindness through photographs and interviews with her blind sitters. The book design incorporates braille and blank white pages along with the brilliant yellow of its covers to further emphasise the senses of sight and touch. It is a moving expression of loss – an exquisite photography book about not seeing.”
Brush and Shutter: Early Photography in China,
Jeff Cody, Frances Terpak et al. (Getty Publications)
“This volume contains a series of essays by both Western and Chinese contributors which illuminate the progress of photography in China between 1859 and 1911. It is a handsome, well-illustrated book that discusses issues raised by the work of many previously little-known photographers and provides perceptive insights into the complex cultural mix from which their work emerged.”
Fred Herzog: Photographs, Fred Herzog (Douglas & McIntyre)
“Fred Herzog’s colour photographs from the 1950s and ‘60s are a revelation, helping to close the gap between the introduction of commercial colour film in the late 1930s and the more celebrated work of Eggleston, Shore et al from the 1970s. This book introduces much previously unpublished work and the essays by Gochmann and Milroy, in particular, contribute valuable biographical, technical and contextual information which should help open up his work to a much wider audience.”
Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs,
Weston Naef and Christine Hult-Lewis (Getty Publications)
“This volume brings together over 1,000 photographs by Watkins from his most impressive negatives (approx. 18 x 22 inches), some of which were previously unidentified and the vast majority of which had never been published. It is an elegant production with a clear layout, combining research in detailed catalogue entries with high quality reproductions that enable the images, although inevitably small, to be easily recognised.”
Redheaded Peckerwood, Christian Patterson (Michael Mack)
“Patterson has taken a teenage American serial-killing couple as inspiration, researched the facts of their crimes and revisited the locations to compile a book that is part evidence and part invention, with eclectic photographs and facsimile documents that move between banal, dramatic and chilling. His carefully crafted design enhances the uneasy sense that the reader is participating in an analysis, both of these past events and of their relevance today.”
Best Moving Image Book Award Shortlist
Selected by judges Sandra Hebron (Chair), Nigel Floyd and Ginette Vincendeau
Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image,
Rosalind Galt (Columbia University Press)
“This groundbreaking book skillfully combines an ambitious theoretical exploration of film style with meticulous textual analysis of a wide range of films from world cinema, in the process reclaiming the notions of the decorative and the ‘pretty’ against dominant critical practice.”
Setting the Scene: The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout,
Fraser Maclean (Abrams & Chronicle Books)
“This pioneering, comprehensively researched and superbly illustrated labour of love brings into the spotlight an aspect of animated cinema that has hitherto languished in the shadows.”
Concentrationary Cinema: Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, Max Silverman and Griselda Pollock (Berghahn Books)
“A radical new look at arguably the most important film about the Nazi Holocaust. Leading experts in French cinema, art history, Holocaust studies and trauma theory confront the film’s racial dimension and demonstrate both its historical anchorage and lasting significance.”
Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Award
Awarded by the trustees of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation
Founded in 1994 Dewi Lewis Publishing is internationally known for its photography list. Its authors include a number of the leading British and international photographers such as William Klein, Martin Parr, Simon Norfolk, Fay Godwin, Tom Wood, Sergio Larrain, Frank Horvat, Susan Lipper, Claudio Edinger and Bruce Gilden. The aim of the company is to bring to the attention of a wider public, accessible but challenging contemporary photography by both established and lesser known practitioners.
The company has a worldwide distribution network and is recognised as one of the leading photographic publishers in the world. It publishes around 18 new titles each year.
Before establishing his own imprint Dewi Lewis was the founding Director of Cornerhouse, one of the major UK Centres for Contemporary Visual Arts and Film, based in Manchester. In 1987 he established Cornerhouse Publications which achieved recognition internationally for its ambitious and imaginative publishing programme and was a winner of the Sunday Times Award for Small Publisher of the Year.
Dewi Lewis was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 2004 and in November 2009 he was awarded the inaugural Royal Photographic Society Award for Outstanding Services to Photography.
Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards Exhibition, 27 April – 20 May 2012
An exhibition of the most highly recommended books from each award, curated by the judging panels, will be on display at Somerset House for the duration of the World Photography Festival and Exhibition from 27 April to 20 May 2012.
Highly recommended photography books for exhibition
Selected by judges Lindsey Stewart (Chair), Gerry Badger and Gem Southam
· Blind, Sophie Calle (Actes Sud)
· Brush and Shutter: Early Photography in China, ed. Jeffrey W Cody and Frances Terpak (Getty Publications)
· Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography, Verna Posever Curtis (Aperture Foundation)
· Santu Mofokeng: Chasing Shadows, Corinne Diserens (Prestel)
· Chromes, William Eggleston (Steidl)
· A New Map of Italy, Guido Guidi (Loosestrife Books)
· Fred Herzog Photographs, Fred Herzog (Douglas l& McIntryre)
· Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs, Weston Naef and Christine Hult Lewis (Getty Publications)
· Redheaded Peckerwood, Christian Patterson (Michael Mack)
· A Criminal Investigation, Watabe Yukichi (Editions Xavier Barral / Le Bal)
Highly recommended moving image books for exhibition
Selected by judges Sandra Hebron (Chair), Nigel Floyd and Ginette Vincendeau
· Useful Cinema, ed. Charles R Acland and Haidee Wasson (Duke University Press)
· Making the Transformational Moment in Film: Unleashing the Power of the Image (with the films of Vincent Ward), Dan Fleming (Michael Wiese Productions)
· Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image, Rosalind Galt (Columbia University Press)
· Film and the End of Empire, ed. Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (Palgrave Macmillan)
· Screening the Unwatchable: Spaces of Negation in Post-Millennial Art Cinema, by Asbjørn Grønstad (Palgrave Macmillan)
· Setting the Scene: The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout, Fraser Maclean (Chronicle Books)
· A Social History of Iranian Cinema (Vol 1), Hamid Naficy (Duke University Press)
· Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film, ed. A L Rees, David Curtis, Duncan White, Steven Ball (Tate Publishing)
· Concentrationary Cinema: Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, ed. Max Silverman and Griselda Pollock (Berghahn Books)
· The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s, Malcolm Turvey (The MIT Press)
ENDS
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Book details
Photo courtesy Lewis in Paris
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by Sophy on Feb 9th, 2012
In an article for START Journal, Ugandan author Doreen Baingana defends the arts – in particular, contemporary dance – against those who downplay its value.
Baingana, author of the award-winning Tropical Fish, attended the Ugandan contemporary dance festival, Dance Transmissions, in October last year which featured, among others, the South African dance troupe Mhayise Productions.
Baingana picks out the performance from Mhayise Productions to show how accessible contemporary dance can be and to support her argument that the arts are “essential to our psychic health”.
A woman, or was it a man, dressed in a white suit, slowly got up from her front-row seat at the National Theatre, moved up the stairs and onto the dim dusty stage, and proceeded to gyrate slowly, achingly, as though creeping up-right, from one side of the stage to the other and then off it with a deep bow. What were we, the audience, to make of this? Was this another example of the “irrelevance of the arts” as espoused by our political leaders?
Anyone with an open mind would disagree. The difficulty of a subject is not proof of its lack of meaning. It’s a pity that the very people who need to be persuaded about the value of the arts do not attend these artistic events such as the one described above, by a Japanese dancer, on the last day of the contemporary dance festival, Dance Transmissions, last October. She shared the stage that same evening with the Ugandan troupe Keiga Dance Company, whose director, Jonas Byaruhunga, an expressive and dynamic dancer himself, organised the three-day event.
Book details
Photo courtesy START
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Verdict: carrot
Apr
