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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Dismantling the Symbolic Structure of Afrikaner Nationalism: Gideon Mendel's 'Beloofde Land' Photographs (1989) |
Author: | Godby, Michael |
Year: | 1998 |
Periodical: | South African Historical Journal |
Issue: | 39 |
Period: | November |
Pages: | 111-128 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | exhibitions images nationalism Afrikaners Great Trek photography History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Literature, Mass Media and the Press |
About person: | Gideon Mendel (1959-) |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582479808671332 |
Abstract: | Gideon Mendel's 'Beloofde Land' collection of 56 photographs documenting the 1988 re-enactments of the Great Trek elicited strong negative reaction when it was exhibited at the Market Gallery, Johannesburg, in March 1989. This criticism serves as an object lesson in censorship and the blinkering effect of political prejudice. In the left-wing media, photographic representation of extreme right-wing groups has been utterly ambiguous. By reinforcing the elements of style by which the right wing defines itself, the left-wing media has created images that the right wing would find impressive and appropriate, while the intended left-wing readership would recognize the same images as objects of hatred. In the event, of course, the photographs depend for their interpretation on the text that accompanies them. Thus, in choosing to exhibit 'Beloofde Land' without text, Gideon Mendel for the first time was attempting to communicate a critical image of the right wing through the medium of photography alone. Unlike the tradition of newspaper photographs of the right wing, the 'Beloofde Land' photographs do not simply reinforce right-wing stereotypes. The exhibition in fact systematically interrogates these stereotypes and, in the process, undermines a large part of the symbolic vocabulary of nationalism in South Africa. Ref. |