Startling side-by-side portraits of victims and perpetrators of apartheid, by an award-winning South African photographer. Jillian Edelstein made her first visit to a South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing in 1997. What the South African-born, prize-winning photographer saw and heard moved her to begin a four-year project photographing the people who were to come forward, both victims and villains, black and white. Eventually, Edelstein traveled the length and breadth of South Africa, compiling an extraordinary record of jarring and moving images, in each case recording her subject's personal stories: from atrocities suffered to crimes committed. Her stories and portraits, intriguingly paired on facing pages, provide a remarkable insight into South Africa's recent history and the awesome difficulty of overcoming it. More than twenty thousand victims, hoping for justice and reparation, made statements to the commissioners in hearings all over South Africa, as did seven thousand perpetrators, who, encouraged by the possibility of amnesty, came forward to confess their crimes. Truth & Lies pairs more than 100 beautifully wrought black-and-white photographs, combining portraiture, landscape, and documentary photography with recorded testimony and interviews, which provide a deeply personal perspective on one of the most important social and political transitions of our time. Major new essays by Michael Ignatieff, professor of the practice of human rights policy at Harvard University, and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, South African psychologist and member of the TRC, assess the legacy of the commission's work for South Africa, and, indeed, the world. 115 b/w photographs.
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From Publishers Weekly
South African photographer Jillian Edelstein's stark, memorable black-and-white photographs are the centerpiece of Truth & Lies: Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Between 1996 and 2000, Edelstein photographed dozens of victims, witnesses and perpetrators ANC activists, apartheid police officers and government officials, family members of those tortured and killed at the hearings and at their homes across South Africa. The photos are supplemented with the subjects' harrowing personal testimonies, Edelstein's crisp reportage and excerpts from the diary she kept throughout the project.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
More than three years after its report came out, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) continues to be a model for countries dealing with issues of guilt, amnesty, and forgiveness. Edelstein is a white South African photojournalist whose moving, full-page, black-and-white photographs, with brief profiles and quotes, bring readers up close to the victims, the perpetrators, and the court proceedings. As Michael Ignatieff says in his fine introduction, the portraits prevent abstraction. Sentimentality disappears. What reconciliation? A torturer poses with macho confidence, proud of himself; Edelstein wonders why he agreed to be photographed. One mother holds a handful of the hair of her son, murdered by the security police. A member of the TRC, Pumla Gobida-Madikizela, brings things into the present by discussing the role of the white bystanders to apartheid: they didn't do the killing, but they are the "beneficiaries"; she calls on them to end their silence. These are strong, disturbing images and ideas, sure to engage those concerned with apartheid history and with racism and reparations here and abroad. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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On 21 March 1960 the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway organization from the ANC established the previous year, held a public protest against the pass laws, the notorious legislation introduced by the apartheid government which required blacks to carry internal passports that regulated almost every aspect of their lives. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Africa, Cape Town, Eastern Cape, Port Elizabeth, Robben Island, Marius Schoon, Nelson Mandela, Dirk Coetzee, Pebco Three, Post Chalmers, Ruth First, Griffiths Mxenge, Archbishop Tutu, Craig Williamson, Jeanette Schoon, Joe Mamasela, Alex Boraine, Jerry Richardson, Anton Lubowski, Brian Ngqulunga, Brigadier Willem Schoon, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Hendrik Verwoerd, Jiss Hall, Joe Slovo New!
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Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
On 21 March 1960 the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway organization from the ANC established the previous year, held a public protest against the pass laws, the notorious legislation introduced by the apartheid government which required blacks to carry internal passports that regulated almost every aspect of their lives. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Africa, Cape Town, Eastern Cape, Port Elizabeth, Robben Island, Marius Schoon, Nelson Mandela, Dirk Coetzee, Pebco Three, Post Chalmers, Ruth First, Griffiths Mxenge, Archbishop Tutu, Craig Williamson, Jeanette Schoon, Joe Mamasela, Alex Boraine, Jerry Richardson, Anton Lubowski, Brian Ngqulunga, Brigadier Willem Schoon, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Hendrik Verwoerd, Jiss Hall, Joe Slovo New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
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8
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- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela on page 72, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Ten South African Poets by Adam Schwartzman in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Nelson Mandela (DK Biography) by Lenny Hort on page 72, and Back Matter
- Nelson Mandela (Life & Times) by James Brown on page 72, and Back Matter
- Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog in Front Matter, and Back Matter
See all 10 books this book cites
- Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition by Sidonie Smith in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition by Sidonie Smith in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Writing Out of All the Camps: J.M. Coetzee's Narratives of Displacement (Studies in Major Literary Authors) by Laura Wright on page 49, and Back Matter
- The War Hotel: Psychological Dynamics in Violent Conflict by A. Audergon in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Haunting Capital: Memory, Text and the Black Diasporic Body (Reencounters with Colonialism: New Perspectives on the Americas) by Hershini Young on page 49
See all 8 books citing this book
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