Ivan Vladislavić and David Goldblatt's photography-fiction collaboration, TJ & DOUBLE NEGATIVE, has been shortlisted for the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, in the category Best Photography Book. The winner will be announced at the Sony World Photography Awards on the 27th of April in Odeon Leicester Square, London.
The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards was founded in 1985 by Hungarian publisher Andor Kraszna-Krausz. Mary McCartney will be chairing the photography awards and the winner will be selected on the basis of the artists who "have made a significant contribution to photography".
TJ/DOUBLE NEGATIVE was first published in a dual collector's edition in October 2010 by Umuzi in South Africa & Contrasto in Italy, in both English and Italian. DOUBLE NEGATIVE, Ivan Vladislavić's haunting literary novel about photography and memory, will be published in its standalone volume form in South Africa by Umuzi in May 2011. The book was beautifully designed by Cyn van Houten.
In DOUBLE NEGATIVE apartheid-era university drop-out Neville Lister is in danger, his father thinks, of 'falling in with the wrong crowd' and so is sent to eminent photographer Saul Auerbach - 'a man of strong convictions, but who has learned to direct them' - to gain some sense of perspective and direction. And so begins a delicate, funny and beautifully written exploration of the art of depiction, of the haunting power of photographs - those 'odd little memorials that owe so much to chance and intuition'. In three sections - 'Available Light', 'Dead Letters', and 'Small Talk' - this spare yet memorable novel tracks the changing city of Johannesburg and Neville's path to career success - though that first day and what they saw, and what Saul Auerbach photographed then, are things he will never forget. DOUBLE NEGATIVE is a brilliant meditation on our ways of seeing and recording, on how and what we remember, and the art of being lost.
Click here to view the entire 2011 Kraszna-Krausz shortlist.
Praise for Ivan Vladislavić
'One of the most imaginative minds at work in South African literature today.' -- André Brink
'Vladislavić is without doubt the most significant writer in South Africa today.' -- Focus on Africa
'Vladislavić is a rare, brilliant writer.' -- Sunday Times (SA)
'PORTRAIT WITH KEYS reminds me sometimes of Orhan Pamuk's ISTANBUL and sometimes of James Joyce's DUBLINERS, but it is really altogether one of a kind.' --Jan Morris
'PORTRAIT WITH KEYS is surely one of the most ingenious love letters - full of violence, fear, humour and cunning - ever addressed to a city. If Italo Calvino had grown up in Jo'burg and experienced both apartheid and its aftermath this is the kind of book he would have been proud to have written.' --Geoff Dyer
For more information on David Goldblatt click here:
http://www.davidgoldblatt.com/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/photographer.php?photographerid=ph026&row=0
David Goldblatt has been photographing and documenting South African society for over 50 years. Born in Randfontein in 1930 to parents who came to South Africa to escape the persecution of Lithuanian Jews in 1890, he was simultaneously part of privileged white society and a victim of religious persecution and alienation. Motivated by his contradictory position in South African society, Goldblatt began photographing this society, and in 1963 decided to devote all of his time to photography.
He was awarded the prestigious Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (2009), for his project "TJ". The award is intended for a photographer of exceptional ability who has an established career and has completed a significant body of work.