Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Koto Bolofo: The Prison

Koto Bolofo: The Prison

Bolofo, Koto

Hardcover

General Photography

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 3869306009
ISBN13: 9783869306001
Publisher: Steidl
Published: Jan 15 2014
Pages: 288
Weight: 3.30
Height: 0.60 Width: 11.50 Depth: 14.60
Language: English
Having left South Africa at the age of four as a political refugee with his parents, photographer Koto Bolofo returned to his home country with his wife in 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela had been released from prison. Bolofo got free access to the notorious and by now deserted prison of Robben Island, where Mandela had been held for the majority of the 27 years of his confinement in a cell of barely 20 square feet in Section B. The photographer and his wife eagerly began documenting the site's abandoned interiors and surroundings, dreading the prison's potential closure. Meanwhile, it was converted into a well-frequented museum in 1997 and included on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1999. The black-and-white photographs of this volume conspicuously favor close-up depictions of details as opposed to general views: leftover items, barbed wire fences, spacious dormitories viewed through a spyhole, the key in the lock to Mandela's cell (which is so tiny it cannot be taken as a whole)--all this is conveying the gloomy sense of claustrophobia and suppression that characterize the place. The camera is constantly searching for the few rays of light that penetrate the ubiquitous grimness and silence of cruelty.

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