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Which art books, prints and posters are available by and about this artist? Here is a sample of items of interest to a typical collector:
Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse worked at Ponte City, the iconic Johannesburg apartment building which is Africa's tallest residential skyscraper, for more than six years. They photographed the residents and documented the building-every door, the view from every window, the image on every television screen. This remarkable body of images is presented here in counterpoint with an extensive archive of found material and historical documents. The visual story is integrated with a sustained sequence of essays and documentary texts. In the essays, some of South Africa's leading scholars and writers explore Ponte City's unique place in Johannesburg and in the imagination of its citizens. What emerges is a complex portrait of a place shaped by contending projections, a single, unavoidable building seen as refuge and monstrosity, dreamland and dystopia, a lightning rod for a society's hopes and fears, and always a beacon to navigate by. This long-term project obtained the Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2011.
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Mikhael Subotzky, South African, b. 1981.
Subotzky is a prominent South African artist and photographer, born in 1981 in Cape Town. He first achieved international acclaim for his immersive, critical documentation of South Africa’s prison systems and marginalized social structures. His early work was deeply rooted in the documentary tradition, yet it maintained a conceptual edge that questioned the relationship between the camera and its subjects. Over time, Subotzky’s practice has evolved from traditional photography toward a more experimental deconstruction of the medium.
He is now widely recognized for his "sticky-tape transfer" process, a technique where he manually pulls layers of ink from a print using adhesive tape and reassembles them. This method allows him to literally and figuratively "break images open," turning a fixed photographic moment into a tactile, layered object that explores the intersections of history, memory, and politics. In 2011, he became a full member of Magnum Photos and has since received several of the industry's highest honors, including the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for his collaborative project, Ponte City. His works are held in the permanent collections of major institutions such as MoMA in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
