Defiant Images: Photography and Apartheid South Africa

Photography is often believed to 'witness' history or 'reflect' society, but such perspectives fail to account for the complex variety of motivations and social/political factors that shape the vision of the world through photography. Defiant Images develops a critical historical method of engaging with photographs of South Africa during the apartheid period. The book looks closely at the photographs in their original contexts and their relationship to the politics of the time, while also listening to the voices of the photographers to try and understand how they viewed the work they were doing, and examining the place of photography in a post-apartheid era. Based on interviews with photographers, editors, and curators, and through the analysis of photographs held in collections and displayed in museums, Defiant Images addresses the significance of photography in South Africa during the second half of the 20th century.