Kurt Campbell - Photography as Pharmacy

Conference in english

South African society has, over ensuing decades, endured the challenges of genocide, colonization, apartheid and structural inequality. These have all produced burdensome and enduring legacies, but crucially these hardships have also forced some to find paths of flight beyond these social quandaries using Photography as an 'artistic praxis of pharmacy'. The focus of this lecture is to study selected photographers and their works so as to develop an aesthetic education that sees photography as a potential resource for change and endurance in the face of severe challenges. The lecture will develop ideas offered in specific photographs that help us to see aspects of the South African social landscape and how this ideation may be used to secure a positive future.

Dr Kurt Campbell is Associate Professor of Fine Art and Director at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. He is a past Harvard University fellow and visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota, Indiana University and the American University in Cairo. He has developed productive interdisciplinary dialogues as an artist and writer extending his practice into fields as broad as pugilism, textuality and historiography. South Africa’s recent political past and the accompanying legacies often feature in his writing and artwork. Crucially, this focus is not to re-inscribe the ideas of ‘race’ or ‘apartheid’, but rather to assist with a final critique of these boundaries and thus contribute to a potentially richer self-concept for individuals as they move in the intellectual world.
 

Photo credit : Kurt Campbell © All rights reserved