THE DISTANCE WITHIN

391pp., 4to., b/w & colour illus., hardback, Steidl, Göttingen, 2024

ISBN: 9783969993088

In The Distance Within Namibia artist Nicola Brandt reflects critically on her German and Namibian roots. The photographs and video stills were created over a decade when she travelled extensively, documenting landscapes, people, structures and encounters, to reveal Namibia's histories of German colonialism, National Socialism and apartheid.

Alongside her photographs and video stills she includes extracts from texts on photography, postcolonial cultures and memory and genocide studies, as well as material from private and public archives, to aid understanding.

Contributions include::

"Mbivanga kutja tjimbakoka mbipakwe pu mbakwaterwa (I want to be buried where I was born)" by Katuvangua Maendo

"The Distance Within" by Nicola Brandt

"Memory Work" by Sean O'Toole

"From the Inside Out" by Zoé Samudzi

"Photography's Distance from Within" by Lorena Rizzo

"The Song of Landscapes in the Aftermath Genocide" by Zamansele Nsele

"Nicola Brandt's Photographs of Memorial Durée" by James E Young

"Revelations in the Plural and the Hybrid" by Gift Uzera and Muningandu Hoveka

"Interview with Nicola Brandt" by Seven Christian.

Nicola Brandt is a Namibian artist of German and South African descent. Her work forms part of intergovernmental talks between Namibia and Germany and has been shown at the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Universities of Yale and Stanford, and Museum Würth in Germany, among others. She is the author of Landscapes Between Then and Now: Recent histories in Southern African photography, video and performance art (2020).