347 pp Johannesburg Publication Bremner's long-awaited collection of essays, spanning more than a decade of work on Johannesburg is both an unflinching analysis of the characteristics of an extraordinary city and a work of imagination that brings the evasive city into being through writing.

Writing the city into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998-2008

Lindsay Bremner

Fourthwall Books

In 2009, William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx were commissioned to make a public sculpture for the city of Johannesburg, on the occasion of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Their sculpture was based on Kentridge’s drawing of a woman street vendor--known colloquially in Johannesburg as a fire walker--carrying a burning brazier on her head. “Fire Walker” thus stands for the ordinary citizen, whose survival depends on his or her ability to negotiate contested urban terrain. The 36-feet-high figure was installed at the foot of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, on a site formerly used by street traders and taxi washers. This volume documents the commission and also includes two photo essays on street vendors and old city monuments.

William Kentridge & Gerhard Marx: Fire Walker

Arts & Photography

Dodd, Alexandra

Sculpture

Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa stems from an exhibition of the same name at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2006, curated by Fiona Rankin-Smith. The book, published in collaboration with WAM (Wits Art Museum), documents and extends the exhibition, bringing together the debates and discussions on faith and art that the exhibition gave rise to, and shedding light on the ways in which art interprets, exemplifies and challenges belief and ritual. Through full-color images and wide-ranging essays, Figuring Faith explores themes such as sacred spaces, death and sacrifice, taboo, the missionary gaze, the demonic, ancestors and spirit presences, confession, catharsis and revelation. Its consideration of historical, ‘traditional’ and contemporary artworks makes it a major contribution to our understanding of art’s relationship to the desire for transcendence. Among the contemporary artists included are David Goldblatt, Jackson Hlungwani, Selinah Makwana, Gerhard Marx, Azaria Mbatha, Santu Mofokeng, Nelson Mukhuba, Johannes Segogela and William Kentridge.

Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa

History & Criticism

No, It Is contains 280 new drawings by William Kentridge (born 1955), selected from a series of approximately 500 drawings made over a three-month period toward the end of 2012. Combining a series of flipbook sequences, it includes self-portraits of the artist sitting down and standing up, contorting himself or dancing; text-based series; geometric blocks of color; and calligraphic renderings of trees that verge on abstraction. As with the artist's previous book works, all of the drawings are executed on the pages of antiquarian publications, from manuals on photography and electricity, dictionaries and guides to polishing leather to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Satisfyingly chunky at 560 pages, and limited to an edition of only 800 copies, No, It Is is the largest flipbook-style publication that Kentridge has yet undertaken.

William Kentridge: No, It Is

Individual Artists

Gary Schneider Handbook: South African Artists

Gary Schneider

Secondhand Reading began life as a film constructed from a succession of drawings made by William Kentridge (born 1955) in 2013, on the pages of old books. Conceived as a kind of secondhand reading in which books are translated into a filming of books, it is both a narrative--it begins at the beginning and will eventually get to the end--and an acknowledgment of the necessity of repetition, inconsistency and the illogical. One of today's most preeminent and popular artists, Kentridge has made many flip books and book-length works that attest to his longstanding interest not only in film (he has been making animated films for two decades) but also in the relationship between drawing, photography and filmmaking. At 800 pages, Secondhand Reading is by far his most ambitious volume. An exquisitely produced publication, it boasts a robust French-fold dustjacket.

William Kentridge: Secondhand Reading

Haabre, The Last Generation Photographs By Joana Choumali

Joana Choumali

Photography & Video

In this book, Terry Kurgan begins with a family snapshot made by her Polish grandfather in 1939 on the eve of the war. Presenting this evocative image as a repository of multiple histories public, private, domestic, familial, and generational she sets off on a series of meditations on photography that give us startling insights into how photographs work: what they conceal, how they mislead, what provocations they contain. Each essay takes up the thread of the story of her familys epic journey across Europe as they flee Nazi occupation, until they reach Cape Town. Kurgans essays are part memoir, part travelogue, part analysis, and they demonstrate her sophisticated understanding of a medium that has long engaged her as an artist.

Everyone Is Present: Essays On Photography, Memory And Family By Terry Kurgan

Terry Kurgan

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