Mikhael Subotzky

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom

The body of work, entitled Die Vier Hoeke, is an in depth photographic study of the South African Correctional Services system. These photographs, originally started while a student at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, are now complimented by a new series, Umjiegwana. Die Vier Hoeke is Sabela (prison gang language) for “the inside” and Umjiegwana is “outside”. Die Vier Hoeke was publicly exhibited inside Pollsmoor Prison itself earlier this year. The series has been highly acclaimed both locally (achieving an unprecedented final University mark of 100%) and by international audiences who have seen it at Art Basel 2005, T1: The Turin Triennial, and the Rencontres Photographiques De Bamako 2005. Umjiegwana is being exhibited for the first time.

The work seeks to place the issues surrounding the correctional services system within a broad socio-political and historic context. Historically, South African prisons have been brutal instruments of racism and oppression under colonialism and the Apartheid regime, incarcerating many of our political leaders. Prisons are thus firmly rooted in the consciousness of this country. Today, South African prisons are grossly overcrowded and understaffed, and subject many of their inhabitants to appalling living conditions. South Africa has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world and currently holds over 187 000 prisoners in facilities designed to hold a maximum of 120 000. This massive overcrowding combines with an overbearing gang culture to produce a prison environment which is unsafe for both prisoners and warders. Un-sentenced prisoners often spend years in these conditions awaiting trial. Thus, a large proportion of South Africa’s already socially marginalized youth are indoctrinated into a culture of crime and violence after being initially arrested for often innocuous crimes. The work aims to de-mystify the prison environment and expose the direct relationship between the state of prisons and the social conditions outside of them. In so doing, it hopes to alert the viewer to their own social responsibility towards a system that is both taken for granted and widely ignored.

Umjiegwana and a part of Die Vier Hoeke will be shown at the Goodman Gallery from 18 February to 11 March 2006. A concurrent exhibition of the rest of the Die Vier Hoeke series will be show at Constitution Hill alongside photographs taken by prisoners themselves during the Prison Photo Workshops. These workshops were set up and run by Mikhael Subotzky between January and April 2005. A small group of prisoners were taught practical photographic skills and were introduced to basic photographic theory and history. The resulting images taken by this group of prisoners are presented here as a unique and compelling body of photographic work which provides a complimentary narrative to Subotzky’s exhibition.

Pressetext

Mikhael Subotzky "Die Vier Hoeke' and 'Umjiegwana"