Jillian Edelstein: Among People art review – Testimonies sealed in time
Spanning four decades of Jillian Edelstein’s career, the exhibition contains crucial photographic evidence of the human rights violations committed under apartheid, documenting the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
This succinct career survey of South African photographer Jillian Edelstein is so emotionally dominated by her coverage of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission in her country’s post-apartheid era that it’s hard to get beyond it in considering the show as a whole. Sure, Edelstein is an accomplished portrait and travel photographer, with one section of wall featuring her shots of activists and politicians such as Vanessa Redgrave and the great man himself, Nelson Mandela. Another shows her spirited snaps of Gilbert & George, Simon Callow and his choreographer, and so on. The recent ‘Water Rats’ series captures the spirit of the Hampstead Ponds swimming community.
But the gravitas of the ‘Truth And Lies’ sequence from the late 1990s is on another level both aesthetically and emotionally. Accompanied by entries from Edelstein’s diary, these images provide an almost unbearably lucid photographic essay on the Desmond Tutu-chaired commission which ran from 1995 to 2000. The aim was to hear from both the perpetrators and victims of human rights abuses committed under apartheid, with the possibility of amnesty upon full confession.
The images are mostly simply framed profiles, many depicting family members of the tortured and killed. A number of these relatives share the same stare, a kind of unswerving, grief-powered intensity: the brother of murdered anti-apartheid polemicist Steve Biko poses in a doorway beneath his sibling’s portrait; Joyce Mtimkulu holds a handful of her dead son’s hair which she kept for 20 years as evidence of him being fed rat poison by the security police. Here is an ANC pastor with his hands blown off; there, Bishop Tutu has collapsed with head in hands from the weight of his duty. You might almost wish for the whole show to be populated with these images, though the presence of just a few is enough to make a visit worth it.
Jillian Edelstein: Among People, Stills, until 24 October.