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Images of life in SA over 60 years

THE Pretoria Art Museum is preparing to host an exhibition of black-and-white photographs documenting South Africa's historic evolution over the past six decades

The exhibition promises to be an extensive spectacle, giving insight into South African society, politics, culture and the economy, as well as the struggle for survival in the big cities.

Art historian Ralf Seippel is the curator of an exhibition that illustrates the way South Africa has evolved into the modern nation that it is today.

It is divided into three periods, from 1950 to 1976 (apartheid), from 1976 to 1994 (struggle) and from 1994 to 2010 (freedom). The artistic documentation, by acclaimed photographers such as Bonile Bam, Sam Nzima, Jodi Bieber, Alf Kumalo, Peter Magubane, Santu Mofokeng, Andrew Tshabangu and several Drum magazine photographers, will provide an insight into life in South Africa over the past 60 years.

Photographs published in Drum in the 1950s and 1960s tell the story of life under apartheid and reveal the naked truth about that inhuman system . They also document sports events, the rise of football stars and entertainment.

Images from the 1970s, such as Nzima's harrowing, but iconic photograph of the wounded Hector Pieterson, gunned down by apartheid police in Soweto on June 16 1976, document the struggle and resistance movements that fought apartheid.

Photographs of 1980s and 1990s highlight violence, murders, demonstrations, imprisonment and the people's fight for freedom.

Finally, photographers of the 21st century show a South Africa of recovery and development, democracy and freedom. But they also show the inequalities that persist.

The exhibition is accompanied by a German-English catalogue of 160 pages published by Hatje Cantz and edited by Delia Klask and Ralf Seippel.

Apart from the photographs in the exhibition the catalogue also features articles by Andries Oliphant, Luli Callinicos and Wiebke Ratzeburg.

The exhibition opens on February 2 at 6pm and closes on April 24.

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