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Notes FYI:

These are not portraits in the traditional sense, rather the focus is on the gesture of the figure in relation to its environment.

In addition to its symbolic role - the shadow also acts to remind the audience that they are not free to scrutinize the faces of the people in the images, frustrating out tendency to presume knowledge about other people simply because we can capture their image on film, suggesting an intimacy that doesn't exist.

I did, however, make some initial choices. While I have done a significant amount of work in black and white,

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I consciously chose to work, here, in color. South Africa's history had been described largely in terms of black and white. I wanted to illuminate a new South Africa through a full range of color.

The work that has emerged is about both the public and the private. the past and the future, the stated and the implied, the narrative and the abstract. It is about identity, but not the limiting identity of the passbook photo. Rather than capturing and fixing the face, identity here is not transparent, but defined through gesture, through activity within the environment.

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It is hoped that within the shallow stage of the picture plane, the view will enter into a space in which people, place and shadow each play a seminal role. The shadow is itself, an animate and sometimes mythic presence, both enfolding and obscuring, respecting the privacy of identity, but illuminating it as well. In looking at the work, the viewer enters into a moment in which the gesture — of people, place and shadow — becomes an essential way of knowing.

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A compelling study of the ways in which people and their environments are inextricably linked. Formally, the images meld the authenticity of full-frame street photography with a reductivist aesthetic. Narratively, they reveal the suggestive resonance of everyday activities — the subtle power of private moments in public spaces to illuminate a moment in the culture's transformation.

As the show's name implies, shadow is utilized as a visual metaphor for the shifting visibility and invisibility of the black population in a time of political and cultural change. Within the shallow stage of the picture plane, the viewer enters a space in which people, place and shadow each play a seminal role.

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The shadow is, itself, an animate and sometimes mythic presence, with the power to both define or obscure, reveal and conceal.

The work concerns identity,
but not the delimiting identity
of the passbook photo (used under apartheid to police the movement of black residents). Rather than capturing and fixing the face, identity here is defined by gestural activity within the environment. West has captured moments in which the gesture — of people, place and shadow — becomes an essential way of knowing.

West remarks, — In a short story by the writer Langston Hughes, the protagonist, Simple, in attempting to

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impart hard-won knowledge to his audience leans forward and urges them to —Listen eloquently! — In my engagement with the people of South Africa I have tried to listen eloquently. I offer my photographs as testimony.

While this marks the first major exhibition of this series in the US, this body of work has been shown extensively in South Africa as a prelude to its American debut.

Exhibitions have been staged throughout South Africa including MuseuMAfricA in Johannesburg and the Association for Visual Arts in Cape Town as well as in the Eastern Cape and the Orange Free State. The work has also been included in the permanent collections of the South African

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National Gallery (SANG), as well as the Constitutional Court in Pretoria, the African National Congress Arts and Culture, and MuseuMAfricA.

West's photographic collections of images have been shown, collected and published nationally and internationally by such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, Polaroid Corporation, the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, WIDE Gallery, Tokyo, the Center for Creative Photography, the South Africa National Gallery, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the San Francisco Art Institute. His upcoming exhibitions include shows at the Smithsonian Institution and the Brooklyn

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Museum. The exhibition consists of 31 (42" x 28") framed photographs. Shot with high speed film and printed on drawing paper, the images have a rich, pointillist texture and the depth of ink on paper.

Casting Shadows, Photographs of South Africa by Edward West was organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Edward West is an Professor of Art at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.

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University of Michigan
Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Scheduled December 2000
One-person show.

Detroit Artists Market
Detroit, Michigan

May / June 2000
Billboard exhibition.

Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC

February 2000 (travelling to 2003)
Group show.

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Association for Visual Arts
Cape Town, South Africa

September 1999
One-person show.

Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery
Bluemfontein, South Africa

August 1999
One-person show.

Bensusan Museum of
Photography MuseuMAfricA
Johannesburg, South Africa

1998
One-person show.

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South African National Gallery
Cape Town, South Africa

South African
Constitutional Court
Pretoria, South Africa

African National Congress
of Arts and Culture
Johannesburg, South Africa

Bensusan Museum of Photography MuseuMAfricA
Johannesburg, South Africa

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Casting Shadows

Published on the occasion of the
exhibition held at the University of
Michigan Museum of Art. Distributed
by University of Washington Press
P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, Washington 98145-5096
www.washington.edu/uwpress/

100XC
Cape Town, South Africa

Catalogue of exhibitions that
were a part of Cape Town's
Month of Photography.

New York Times,  April 2000
New York, New York

Review of Smithsonian exhibition
entitled "Reflections in Black"
by Vicki Goldberg.

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Cape Review,  October 1999
South Africa

Exhibition review and image.

Varsity,  October 1999
South Africa

Exhibition review.

Die Burger,  October 1999
South Africa

Review of Casting Shadows,
image reproduced.

Rapport
South Africa