The Cold Choice: Operation Hunger – Photographs by Struan Robertson

Struan Robertson. Solomon Louw, trekarbeider (itinerant farm worker), with his donkeys, outspanned at Salt Lake near Kimberley, Northern Cape Province. 11 February 1993.

The photographs by Struan Robertson (1927-2011) in this exhibition, are the result of his four years of travel and documentation in South Africa with Operation Hunger. The photographs are a record of rural poverty in South Africa during the 1980s at the height of apartheid, and the everyday battles by rural people to survive, and triumph, if in small but important ways. Robertson’s photographs, however, not only document heartrending examples of poverty – he certainly does this – but he uses his skill to create thoughtprovoking images that are evocative of the harshly beautiful environment of rural areas and people’s relationships to their environment.

Struan Robertson is a neglected artist in the history of South African photography. The Cold Choice, curated by the Bensusan Museum of Photography in Johannesburg, is the first exhibition of his work to be mounted by major museums in South Africa. The exhibition is curated by Dudu Madonsela of the Bensusan Museum.

Enquiries: Fiona Clayton,
Tel: 021 467 7219
email: fclayton@iziko.org.za