Casting Shadows: Images from a New South Africa (1999)
| Series information: | In Casting Shadows (1999), Edward West documents everyday life in South Africa in the wake of Apartheid, capturing a society in transition. The project emerged from West’s long-standing engagement with the country, first sparked by Sizwe Bansi is Dead by Athol Fugard, and later deepened through his direct work within townships and urban communities. Photographed in spaces historically shaped by segregation, townships, informal settlements, and marginal urban zones, the series foregrounds the subtle textures of daily life. West’s images balance immediacy and formal restraint, combining the language of street photography with a reductive, almost painterly aesthetic achieved through high-speed film and digital printing techniques. The motif of the shadow operates as both visual and conceptual anchor. It gestures toward histories of erasure and marginalisation, while also suggesting presence, movement, and transformation. In this way, shadow becomes a metaphor for the shifting visibility of Black South Africans in a newly democratic society, at once defining and obscuring, revealing and withholding. Through close engagement with the communities he photographs, West positions the everyday as a site of quiet yet profound change. His use of colour resists binary narratives of black and white, instead evoking a “multi-hued” South Africa marked by complexity, plurality, and ongoing negotiation. Reference List TFAOI (The Fine Arts Organisation, Inc.). (n.d.) Casting Shadows: Photographs by Edward West. Available at: https://www.tfaoi.org/aa/2aa/2aa328.htm (Accessed: 21 April 2026). Fugard, Athol (1972) Sizwe Bansi is Dead. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. |
