Alastair Whitton

Alastair Whitton’s most recent body of work entitled A Foreign Land will be presented as a solo project at AKAA: Also Known as Africa by Black Box Publishing from 9-11 November. Essentially a portrait of Cape Town, a city in flux, this limited edition photo book project comprises 15 hand printed gelatin silver prints and includes an introductory text by South African born Dutch artist Marlene Dumas and a scholarly essay by author Ashraf Jamal. 

The work of South African photographer, Alastair Whitton is preoccupied with ‘the mechanisms of memory and the mapping of geographies’. Through the lens he explores the ‘architecture of time and the poetics and politics of place' attempting to illuminate the ‘space between moments’. His photographs celebrate the seemingly commonplace and are in effect ‘monuments to the dislocated and overlooked’. Of his creative practice the artist says, ‘I understand the process as a form of visual and cultural archaeology; a gathering and structuring of found fragments in an attempt to make sense of place and time and the recording of personal and collective histories.’

Alastair Whitton - A Foreign Land was recently added to the Aperture Foundation collection in New York and will  be presented at Barnard Cape Town from 21 January to 25 February, 2020.