An imperial past in ruins: Joseph Denfield's photographs of East London, 1960-1965

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Periodical article

Title:	An imperial past in ruins: Joseph Denfield's photographs of East London, 1960-1965
Author:	Mnyaka, Phindezwa
Year:	2014
Periodical:	Journal of Southern African Studies (ISSN 1465-3893)
Volume:	40
Issue:	4
Pages:	801-818
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	photography buildings British political change
About person:	Joseph Denfield (1944-1967)
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2014.931058
Abstract:	This paper provides a reading of changing white subjectivity in the context of South Africa's transition to republican status in the early 1960s. It explores this theme through a reading of photographs of architectural ruins in East London that were taken by Joseph Denfield from approximately 1960 to 1965. The author argues that Denfield's photographs of ruins registered the changes that took place by bringing into greater visibility sites that spoke to the town's British past. Through his framing, choice of subject and totalising views of sites, his photographs functioned as a form of photographic persuasion that directed the viewer towards a particular temporality. These not only constructed the city's past through the lens of British settlement but reconstituted the city as ruinous under the new political dispensation. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]