Citation

Law-Viljoen B. Theory Cult. Soc. 2010; 27(7-8): 214-237.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0263276410383711

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article considers the changing perceptions, expressions and representations of violence in South Africa post-1994, with particular reference to photography. Following the evolution of the documentary tradition in its relationship to the political history of South Africa, I will suggest that since the release of Nelson Mandela and the first democratic elections in South Africa, photography has taken a new turn, particularly with regard to its representation of violence, which had been its primary iconography up to that watershed moment. I will follow three arguments (from Sartre, Benjamin and Mbembe) in my explication of the ways in which violence has both altered South African society and assumed a different place in the collective mind of South Africans living in a country that is politically free but grappling with an ever-rising wave of violent crime.