Ghetto
by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Between the image of a life and the medium that delivers it there is a void. On the one hand there is the machinery of film, the written word and song, the medium itself. On the other hand there exists the life. It was this void that Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin sought to describe by illustrating the sheer and apparent dignity of lives removed from the everyday, of people who live in societies far from the mainstream.

The two photographers chose 12 rare communities, from a prison in South Africa to a retirement home in California and a gypsy ghetto in Macedonia. They spent a month in each place, methodically photographing and asking the same questions: "Who is in power here? Where do you go to be alone, to make love, to be with friends? What are your hopes and dreams?"

The answers they received to their questions were both revealing and absurd, but with the powerful and dramatic truths that they found, for instance, with Rafael, a patient in the mental asylum in Cuba: "What are you scared of Rafael?" "I’m afraid of the outside." "Why?" "Because Rafael is there and I don’t want to see him." "But you are Rafael." "Now you understand what I’m scared of."

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin are a photographic team based in London. Together they have produced three photographic books; Trust (2000) which accompanied their solo-show at The Hasselblad Center, Ghetto (2003) a collection of their work as editors and principal photographers of Colors magazine and Mr Mkhize’s Portrait (2004) which documented South Africa ten years after apartheid and accompanied their solo show at The Photographers’ Gallery.
Golden Light Award
PDN Best Books 2004

Read the foto8 review of this book.br>



Price: £29.95
Member price: £24