Erleen Botha

Fellow: Visual History, MA

I am a Masters student in the Department of History at the University of Western Cape. My research project: Inside and after apartheid the two lives and the visual self representations of the South African documentary photographer Juhan Kuus 1953-2015 seeks to write the biography of  this particular documentary photographer.  It further looks at how prize winning photojournalist and later documentary photographer ends up homeless on the streets of Cape Town after 1994. And turn his camera on the marginal amongst whom he belong. Concepts that I am working with are apartheid, biography, whiteness ,visual self representations and the photography of trauma. This research further seeks to look at the social decline documentary photographers which may be related to personal and professional trauma. It intend to question the ways in which documentary photography deals with such cases.