Photographic Publics and Photographic Desires in 1980s South Africa

Testimonies of photographic printers and distributors in progressive organizations are taken together with accounts of South African photographers to delineate the points of induction into political association and the creation of new publics and anti-apartheid solidarities through the photographic image. In a discussion of Ranciere’s “distribution of the sensible” the differing emphases in external distribution as against the difficulties of internal dissemination are highlighted. The paper revisits the earlier part of the 1980s to explore the initial “rising up of surfaces” that link mourning and uprising across larger bodies of history.