The Distance Within

The Distance Within is a poignant act of rememory — visually stunning and intellectually rigorous. In tracing the wounds etched into the landscape, its people, and their stories, the book invites us to witness not only the scars of history but also the acts of resistance, remembrance, and reclamation. It is a necessary and meditative contribution 
to the work of historical reckoning.  A triumph.

— Suta Kavari, Political Economist

The Distance Within conveys both the beauty and vastness of Namibia, as well as the deep challenges the country continues to face. Through evocative photography featuring landscapes and people, the book captures these contrasts. By combining the author’s masterful work with historic photographs, it offers powerful insights into the enduring legacy of a violent colonial past. The photographs also document-and make tangible-the activism of a younger generation of Namibians who are finding fresh, creative ways to engage with and challenge that history. This perspective is further reinforced by texts written by individuals who are part of, or closely observing, this movement. The images produced and assembled by Nicola Brandt allow readers to explore multiple dimensions of Namibia’s postcolonial reality.

— Reinhart Kößler , German Sociologist

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Landscapes Between Then and Now

Landscapes Between Then and Now reminds us of the extraordinary enmeshment of histories in Southern Africa in spite of rigid man-made borders and the traumas that came with them. In tracing the work of key artists working in photography, performance and video art, it delves into the complex politics of land and reflects on nuanced tensions emanating from different places, spaces and time periods. In many ways it creates a context for important debates around collective memory and commemoration that are ongoing today.

— Tandazani Dhlakama, Curator, Zeitz Mocca Museum, South Africa

Landscapes Between Then and Now brilliantly explores how artistic and critical practices of post-apartheid South Africa and Namibia chart a creative and critical path out of habituated ways of looking at the world with a Western, colonial and inherently unjust gaze. This lucid, innovative and deeply ethical study of a range of genres and artists will quickly become an enduring and indispensable book for anyone concerned with camera-based art practices in our globalized age.

— Ulrich Baer, New York University, USA

This is an extraordinary book for those interested in a more prismatic consideration of the visualization of history at the interstices of violence, race and modernity in Africa; here the landscape itself is the primary archive. Focused on Southern Africa, Brandt reaches beyond the knowing silence photography can engender, to give voice to formerly unspeakable things that perhaps can no longer remain unspoken.

— Erica Moiah James, Art Historian, Curator and Professor

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Conversations Across Place: Reckoning with an Entangled World, Vol. 1

If there was ever a time when we needed new intellectual maps and new cultural thinking, it is now, if ever there was a time for inspiration and beauty, it is now, if there was a time for us to share the message that this volume has to offer, it is today. This is a timely and astutely considered book that offers affecting and important reflections on this complex moment of cultural.

— Augustus Casely-Hayford, OBE, Director, V&A East

However, heterogenous its subjects, Conversations Across Place goes far beyond gathering in its execution, gladly living up to a transformative proposition of interdependency. The collection is restorative in its approach, and urgently needed in its examinations.

— Lili Zarzycki, Writer, and assistant editor at The Architectural Review

Conversations Across Place: Reckoning with an Entangled World, Vol. 1 is a compelling collation of novel and enlightening perspectives organised around the idea of landscape/place. This collection of essays, interviews and images is provocative; creatively and imaginatively engaging with a host of critical contemporary paradigms through a wide and venturous lens.

— Mark Raymond, Director, Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg

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