Mikhael Subotzky & Patrick Waterhouse: Ponte City Revisited
54 Storeys Published by Steidl.
Edited with text by Ivan Vladislavic. Introduction by Clément Chéroux. Text by Lindsay Bremner, Denis Hirson, Harry Kalmer, Kgebetli Moele, Sean O’Toole, et al. A greatly expanded and updated trade edition of the much-lauded photobook about an iconic Johannesburg apartment building Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse worked at Ponte City, the iconic Johannesburg apartment building and Africa’s tallest residential skyscraper, for more than six years, photographing its residents and exhaustively documenting the building—every door, the view from every window, the image on every television screen. A sequence of essays and documentary texts is also integrated into the visual story.
This expanded edition includes images not included in the original, as well as installation shots from the project’s exhibitions around the world. In the essays, some of South Africa’s leading scholars and writers explore Ponte City’s unique place in Johannesburg and in the imagination of its citizens. What emerges is a complex portrait of a place shaped by contending projections, a single, unavoidable building seen as refuge and monstrosity, dreamland and dystopia, a lightning rod for a society’s hopes and fears.
Mikhael Subotzky (born 1981) is a South African artist working across mediums including film, photography, painting and collage. Subotzky’s work is held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. He lives and works in Johannesburg.
Patrick Waterhouse (born 1981) is a British photographer whose projects are often collaborative, shaped by close engagement with his subjects. His work is held in collections including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Centre Pompidou, Paris. His most recent book is Restricted Images (2018).
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