Sean O'Toole
South African History Through the Photobook
Summary
“A photobook is a book, with or without text, where the work’s primary message is carried by photographs.” In this lecture, Sean O'Toole examines South African history through the lens of a particular book that came out in 1967 by Ernest Cole.
Sean O'Toole
Sean O’Toole is writer, editor, and curator based in Cape Town. His books include the biography Irma Stern: African in Europe - European in Africa (2021) and short story collection The Marquis of Mooikloof and Other Stories (2006). He has edited three volumes of essays, including African Futures (2016) and The Journey (2020). A working journalist principally focused on art, photography, and architecture, he has published well over a thousand news articles, reviews, features, and commentary in print and online. He has adjudicated numerous awards, including the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Daimler Award for South African Photography, and Frieze Writer’s Prize. He is the founder of independent publisher Extemporary Press.
Yes, so there’s Boer War photos, less so, because at the time, most of the images were rendered, if you think of The News of the World illustrations, they were still sending artists to make drawings. I’m not so sure about World War I, but World War II, definitely. I just, it’s on the tip of my tongue, Constance Stuart Larrabee was a war correspondent in the mould of Lee Miller, for Vogue, and she … After she moved to the US, the Smithsonian gave her a big exhibition, and they did publish a book of her photographs from World War II, so that’s Constance Stuart Larrabee.
Mm, I think there’s an interesting relationship between images and text. Images can be fairly passive in that they can say a lot but nothing, and they need words to help guide us where to look, what to think, you know, understand some of the context, but words don’t exhaust an image, I don’t think.