Beyond Trauma: Landscape, Memory, and Agency in Photographs by Cedric Nunn and Sabelo Mlangeni

Authors: Corrigall, M.

Journal: Safundi

Volume: 15

Issue: 2-3

Pages: 329-351

eISSN: 1543-1304

ISSN: 1753-3171

DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2014.925644

Abstract:

This article looks at recent series of landscape photographs by Sabelo Mlangeni and Cedric Nunn to argue that they constitute visual memory archives, which celebrate the agency and diversity of black South African life in past, present, and future moments. It is also argued that these visual memory archives challenge the status of victimhood often conferred upon black South Africans by discourses of trauma. The article focusses on Mlangeni's At Home and Nunn's One Hundred Years of Resistance series. An interdisciplinary range of conceptual tools are employed in order to compare the different strategies employed by Nunn and Mlangeni to explore the relationship between memory, landscape experience and photography and resist the trauma narrative. Ultimately, this article seeks to demonstrate the need for academic, archival, and curatorial responses to landscape photography in South Africa to appreciate and accommodate a range of dissenting voices. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Source: Scopus