Notes

Günther Herbst acquired stacks of discarded photographs from Johannesburg street photographers in Joubert Park who enticed passers-by with the promise of perfect and dreamlike images of themselves, posed in idyllic settings in the makeshift street studios. Many of these photographs, however, were unclaimed, and never collected, and thus in a sense the dreams remained unfulfilled. Others were clearly photographic mistakes, such as the image resulting from the end of the spool of film in the camera, evident in the pronounced black mark in the top right-hand corner of one of the two drawings in the present lot. Other photographs were overexposed, as is evident in the overall white-washed effect in the second of the two works on this sale. Herbst gives these abandoned photographs a new stature and dignity by rendering the sitters in highly skilled, life-size pastel drawings.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner.

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Drawings and Paintings by Günther Herbst, 22 March to 4th April 1992, Prodigal Son I illustrated on the invitation. The artist won the Vita Art Now award in 1992 for this exhibition.

Galerie de l'Esplanade la Defense, Paris, Un Art Contemporain d'Afrique du Sud, Paris, 1994.

Literature

Jean-Yves Jouannais (1994) Un Art Contemporain d'Afrique du Sud, Paris: Plume, illustrated in colour on pages 44 and 45.