Margaret Bourke-White and Dawn of Apartheid Photo Exhibit
A podcast by Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of history at Indiana University, Bloomington
A podcast by Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of history at Indiana University, Bloomington
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Duration: 53:52
AlexLichtenstein10-25-2013-kg-50w.mp3
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This lecture focused on Professor Lichtenstein's curatorial work on an
exhibition of photographs of South Africa by Margaret Bourke-White. The
photographs, taken 1949-1950 for Life magazine, offer a visual
history of the diversity of South African life as whites imposed total
segregation. The exhibit highlights the place of these photos within
Bourke-White’s work; the dynamics of African and white culture in South
Africa at this critical juncture; and the birth of Afrikaner nationalism
and formation of the apartheid state, as it was presented to an
American audience themselves grappling with segregation.
Alex Lichtenstein is associate professor of history at Indiana
University, Bloomington, and he has taught at the University of the
Western Cape and the University of Cape Town. His work centers on the
intersection of labor history and the struggle for racial justice in
societies shaped by white supremacy, particularly the U.S. South
(1865-1954) and 20th-century South Africa. His first book, Twice the Work of Free Labor
examines the role of convict leasing and chain gangs in the remaking of
the postbellum American South. His articles and essays on South
African labor have appeared in Journal of Southern African Studies, Journal of African History, and the LA Review of Books.
Published: Thursday, June 26, 2014