Launch of TJ & Double Negative by David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislavic at Boekehuis

by Amanda on Nov 11th, 2010

Umuzi and Boekehuis invite you to the launch of David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislavic’s unique collaborative work, TJ & Double Negative.

About TJ:

In David Goldblatt’s TJ he writes that ‘Johannesburg is a fragmented city. It is not a place of smoothly integrated parts. And it has a name that does not roll easily off the tongue.’ TJ, a book of photographs of Johannesburg: the City of Gold, Chowburg, eGoli, Jozi, Goutini, Duiwelsdorp.

Commencing in the 1950s, Goldblatt’s masterful lens probes, documents, and comments on life over six decades in this incomparable African city.

Selected from a massive body of work, this superb distillation presents a unique pictorial history of the city.

About Double Negative:

Accompanying TJ in a sleeved set beautifully produced in Italy, is Double Negative, a new novel by Ivan Vladislavić. In Double Negative, a young man in Johannesburg receives from a senior photographer an induction into the intricate nature of photography and artistic representation. ‘If,’ he says, ‘I try to imagine the lives going on in all these houses, the domestic dramas, the family sagas, it seems impossibly complicated. How could you ever do justice to something so rich in detail? You couldn’t do it in a novel, let alone a photograph.’

The novel traces the young man as he heads into his career that takes him overseas and back, developing in the process an ever widening perspective on not only the social and political change in the country but also on questions to do with observation and the observing subject. It brings into sharp focus the history of South Africa’s recent past and the difficulty of imaging and re-imagining it.

Please join us at Boekehuis Bookshop on the 16th for a discussion between David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislavic, moderated by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, the newly appointed editor of Art SA.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Event Details

Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
Venue: Boekehuis Bookshop
Corner Lothbury Road and Fawley Avenue
Auckland Park
Johannesburg | Map
RSVP: Boekehuis@boekehuis.co.za, 011 482 3609