The exhibit documents the history of apartheid in South Africa through photographs from the 1950s through the 1990s. It shows everyday scenes of the strict racial segregation and discrimination policies. One photo depicts a black woman comforting a white girl on a park bench, highlighting how apartheid divided people. Over time, the photos show the increasing protests and violence against apartheid as non-white South Africans fought for their rights and equality. While the policies officially ended, the exhibit notes the struggles from apartheid's legacy still continue for many non-white communities today.

1. A Division Between People
Written by
Samantha R. Tolson
October 18, 2012

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The International Center of Photography’s exhibition, Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography
and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, was a winding and violent path through the history of
South Africa’s past. Through documentary photography and film, the history of its racism was
painted across a subtle yet brutal canvas.
Like the photo, Playing jukskei (a South African version of the game “horseshoes”) (1954), by
Dan Weiner in which three white women play jukskei in Pretoria. It seems harmless until you
realize they were probably playing in a country club or other social establishment where
“nonwhites” (the population not European-descended) were banned.
Or, like Weiner’s Sharpeville Shooting (1960). There is a chilling tingle when you see a man
lying dead on the ground while white officers and other men stand around him, discussing other
business.
At times hypnotic and other times repellant, the exhibit reminds us of one of the darker moments
of not only South Africa’s but other nations’ racial sagas. Many of the photographs were taken
by unknown photographers, which could simply be reasoned as the photographers’ choice to
remain anonymous. It could also be a symbol of the silenced majority by an oppressive
government.
The exhibit began with two flat screen televisions showcasing two documentary clips. The
first was footage surrounding the National Party overthrow of the United Party on May 26, 1948.
Under their continuous forty-six year regime, apartheid would be established and honed into the
institution that stains South African race relations today. The second screen displayed the footage
of an unexpected call by F.W. de Klerk in February 1990 to release political dissidents (like
Nelson Mandela) and give equality to all citizens of South Africa. These films briefly stake out
the beginning and the end of apartheid. The middle is vividly fleshed out through the remainder
of the exhibit. Photographs began in medias res with documentary photographs from the 1950’s,
after apartheid was established and was slowly becoming an integral tenet in South African life.
As you passed through a number of the open rooms, the photographs remained in the 1950’s,
except for the brief visit to the work of late nineteenth-century photographers.
Part of a scientific study from 1840 (and even up to the early twentieth century), South
Africa’s “white” population used this new medium to classify and determine biological
discrepancies between whites, natives, and the influx of Asian immigrants coming into South
Africa about that time. It is from these documentary photographs activists were inspired to use
photography to record injustices during apartheid. Photography, more than any other medium,
could be used to make the killings and riots of apartheid more realistic to the outside world.
From here, the viewer is instantaneously returned to the 1950’s. Naturally, the walls and glass
cases along it feature photographs in which nonwhite protesters rally against the regime.
However, along the back walls, show girls and blues singers dominate the landscape. It turns our

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attention away from the well-known images of protest signs and fists in the air to a more
glamorous side of 1950’s South Africa. The mood, however, is deceptive. Blues singers and jazz
performers transformed the originally American genre of music into their own quiet protest.
Nonwhite singers and performers were not allowed to play for white or mixed audiences, but
they could play for peers of the same color. It documents an inner struggle to maintain a sense of
identity that protest signs and violent riots cannot capture.
Stagnant in this one decade, there is a message. During the 1950’s, there was still a sense of
hope that apartheid would not last; a short phase, nothing more. There is hope in these
photographs of protestors as they stand, at times with whites, which is lost in the later decades.
A photograph in the collection which captures the underlying separation in all the exhibit’s
photographs and films is Nanny and Child (1956) by Peter Magubane. A little girl sitting on a
“Europeans Only” bench (or the side of public benches where whites were allowed to sit) is
watched from behind by a black woman sitting on the opposite side. She twists her whole body
to face the back of the girl and strokes her hair. It is a heart-wrenching moment when you realize
the simple tragedy of apartheid. It was not just a political barrier, racial segregation, or an
oppressive government. It was a division between people.
Historically, the signs of division and relocation are eerily familiar. One of the few non-
photographic pieces was an old “passbook”. The Abolition of Passes and Coordination of
Documents Act of 1952 required all nonwhites to carry a passport-like booklet which detailed all
their personal information including: work, residence, and any violations committed. Many
corresponding badges come to mind, but none quite as equitable as the yellow star Polish and
German laws required Jews to wear between 1939 and 1943. These identifiers were leashes to
keep Jews and nonwhites in their own backyard. However, unlike the yellow star, nonwhites in
South Africa could not rip off the true source of their segregation, their skin color.
The townships blacks were shuffled to by South Africa’s segregation policies parallel the
reserves to which the Australian government transported Aborigines. Little arable, the
Aborigines could hardly farm to support themselves, and the help they received from the
government was barely enough to meet their basic needs. The sanitation and houses received in
the townships were often ignored by the government’s central services and left to decay.
In a photograph in the gallery, whites and nonwhites walk up two different sides of the same
staircase. The image seamlessly converges with photographs of public restrooms and drinking
fountains in the American South, signs overhead labeled as “Whites Only” or “Coloreds Only”.
Towards the middle of the exhibit, the timeline picks up pace through the sixties showing
women’s “beehive” hairstyles and the seventies with celebrity magazines and photographs of
hippies sitting in the grass. Into the eighties, the tone becomes significantly more violent as
almost all of them shows guns and buildings irreparably shambled.

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One photograph shows a small, black girl seemingly playing dress-up as she fastens a long,
white glove to her arm. It becomes disturbing when you realize she is preparing to be a
pallbearer in a man’s funeral after policemen shot him. The nineties’ photographs are
superimposed by the iconic image of Nelson and Winnie Mandela leading a crowd, both raising
their fists proudly in the air.
The exhibit in its entirety depicts, unabashedly, the division apartheid brought. It is not the
realization governments could arbitrarily mandate legal segregations (as Southern Americans
knew all too well during the Jim Crow days) but that this particular instance of it is still very
fresh in our collective memory.
However, as with any civil rights movement, there is no room for catharsis. The exhibit
continues long after the iconic image of Nelson Mandela’s release into the aftermath of apartheid
today. Poverty and polarization still deeply impact non-white communities in South Africa. This
exhibit is not a testament to another historical event. It is a testament to our everyday struggle as
human beings and our hope that tomorrow will be better.