Jim Goldberg/Mikhael Subotzky
dal 3/11/2011 al 9/12/2011
Segnalato da
3/11/2011
Jim Goldberg/Mikhael Subotzky
Magnum Gallery, Paris
"Open See" by Goldberg addresses the topic of immigration in Greece, Ukraine, India and Africa, while Subotzky' photographs focuse on Beaufort West that, like many small South Africa town, is still highly segregated.
Jim Goldberg
Open See
The gallery in collaboration with the festival “images & mots à Saint-Germain-des-Prés” has given an outstanding place to Jim Goldberg’s last work entitled “Open See”.
Portrait and writing are the focus of this work that won the HCB Award in 2007 and the Deutsche Borse Prize in 2011. “Open See”, addresses the topic of immigration in Greece, Ukraine, India and Africa. Californian photographer Jim Goldberg creates mural compositions mixing different formats and colour, black and white photographs. The Polaroids are the matrices, the portraits of the migrants encountered bring together, with its witting on the same picture, the testimony of their history. The documentary large format photographs escape from the intimate and personal portraiture expanding the look at the poignant story of contemporary migration.
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Mikhael Subotzky
Beaufort West
For some two or three kilometres, the N1, the great highway that traces South Africa’s north/south axis, becomes Beaufort’s West’s main street. About a million people pass through each year, and in the evenings, an assortment of the town’s 37 000 residents come out to meet them. They offer all the commodities a night traveller might want: food, drink and petrol, a place to stay, an hour’s worth of sex. In exchange for their wares, Beaufort West’s people are preserving a frail connection with the world. Without its national road, this town, some three-quarters of its residents unemployed, would surely be lost unto itself.
Like many small South Africa towns, Beaufort West is still highly segregated. The quiet streets of the town itself are clustered around the main road and still house an almost exclusively white population. They go their daily lives largely unaware of what goes on in the outlying townships where the majority of the population live.
The local jail, too, is on the main road, and it is what caught Mikhael Subotzky’s attention: ‘I was drawn to Beaufort West because its prison is bizarrely situated in a traffic circle in the centre of the town in the middle of the N1 highway,’ Subotzky says. ‘Most South African prisons are hidden from view on the outskirts of our towns and cities. I was interested in this image of the prison at the centre of the town.’
Extract of text by Jonny Steinberg
Image: Jim Goldberg, Fousehi Sedibe. Nouadhibou, Mauritania, 2008
Opening: November 4
Magnum Gallery
13, rue de l'Abbaye - Paris
Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 7 PM
Free admission