Abstract:
In this article, I look at the “ordinary” (or “everyday”) archive of the racially oppressed,
viewing it as an entry point into apartheid afterlives, while arguing for a rethinking of
humanness and freedom after racial oppression. I consider the photographs produced
by “Movie Snaps” – a street photographic studio of Cape Town, South Africa, that
operated between the 1930s and the 1980s – and suggest that looking to previously
marginalised narratives can offer insight into larger questions of self-representation,
belonging and freedom. The contents of this article are based on a larger research
project on forced removals in Cape Town, out of which several exhibitions and two
documentary films have been produced to date.
