Writer, critic and scholar on African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, John Edwin Mason, was in attendance at the opening of Cedric Nunn’s Call and Response at David Krut Projects in New York last week.
He has written a delightful review of the exhibition – the full article can be read on his blog here, but here is an excerpt from the text.
“Sometimes the most powerful photographs whisper. They invite us into their world and make us want to linger. They move us deeply without seeming to try. We want to take them in slowly — looking, thinking, feeling. Images that refuse to shout can seem out of step with our culture of tweets and likes, buzz and blogs, but they’re often the photos that we end up liking the best. I suspect it’s also the photography that will endure.
Cedric Nunn has been a name to be reckoned with ever since the 1980s, when he was a member of the Afrapix collective, making some of the most iconic photographs of the South African freedom struggle. That’s when I became aware of him. But it’s only in the last few years that I’ve begun to appreciate the depth and complexity of his body of work.”
