Strauss & co - 15 February 2020, Cape Town

74 THE PROPERTY OF A COLLECTOR LOTS 53–74 58  MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY SOUTH AFRICAN 1981– Tamatie, Beaufort West Prison edition 3/9 pigment print on archival paper image size: 105 by 128,5cm R120 000 – 180 000 EXHIBITED Another example from the edition exhibited at: Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Beaufort West (in New Photography 2008: Josephine Meckseper and Mikhael Subotzky ), 10 September 2008 to 12 January 2009. Studio La Citta, Verona, Beaufort West , 1 December 2007 to 26 January 2008. FOAM (Foto Museum Amsterdam), Amsterdam, Netherlands, 21 September to 11 November 2007. Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Beaufort West , August 2007. Subotzky’s Beaufort West photographic series is an intimate look at the small, dusty Karoo town; capturing life both in- and outside the prison environment. One of the intrigues of Beaufort West for the artist was the strangeness of the placement of its prison: contained in a roundabout on the N1 highway that runs through the centre of town. In the 2009 photobook for this series, Jonny Steinbeck described the desperate nature of the rural town: “You can see the trouble Beaufort West lives with in the thin abstraction of statistics. Two-thirds of its adult residents have no work. And in this town of 37,000, more than 20 people have been murdered in a year: a hair- raising homicide rate of 60 in every 100,000.” 1 Of this series Subotzky said “In Beaufort West, I was looking less at the drama of the institution (or post-institution life) and more at the particularities of people’s lives in relation to marginalization and struggle…” 2 This is compellingly captured in the present lot, a powerfully quiet vignette of the prisoner, Tamatie. 1. Jonny Steinbeck (2009) Beaufort West , [Online], Available: http://www.subotzkystudio.com/ works/beaufort-west-text/ [12 December, 2019] 2. Mikhael Subotzky and Michael Godby (2006) Inside and Outside: Mikhael Subotzky in Conversation with Michael Godby. Kronos , (32), 14. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/ stable/41056556