Photobook Mania 03 / Carla Liesching presents Good Hope

About the event

The third appointment of Photobook Mania will take place on Wednesday 15 May at PhMuseum Lab. South African artist Carla Liesching will present Good Hope, published by MACK.

Named by the Portuguese in their Age of Discovery (c. 15th–18th century), The Cape of Good Hope in South Africa was a pivotal location at the height of the British Empire due to its position along the Spice Route, and later as a base for flows of capital from East to West.

Kaap die Goeie Hoop in Afrikaans, the Cape is now the epicenter of anti-colonial resistance movements, as well as source of inspiration for the work of Carla Liesching, which employs documents, personal essays, and archival photographic material, analyzing their meaning. Her sources include newspapers, tourist brochures, magazines, contemporary publications, and family albums. Good Hope aims to offer a critical examination of colonialism, whose propaganda has largely made use of photography to construct imaginaries and influence our perception of reality.

Some copies of the book will be available to be purchased and signed by the author.

Bio

Carla Liesching is an interdisciplinary artist working across photography, writing, collage, sculpture, bookmaking, and design. Grounded on experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa, she focuses on the intersections of representation, knowledge, and power, with a focus on colonial histories and enduring constructions of race and geography.

Good Hope was published by MACK in 2021 and has been shortlisted for both the Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award 2022 and the Prix du Livre Arles 2022 in the Photo-text category. Sculptural columns from Good Hope have been exhibited in Paris, Amsterdam, Seoul, Frankfurt, New York, Cape Town and Bologna.

Liesching lives between South Africa and New York, where she works as a Visiting Critic in the Department of Art, Architecture and Planning at Cornell University; as a Lecturer in the Department of Art, Art History and Architecture at Ithaca College; as a Lecturer at the International Center of Photography; and as Coordinator of the School of Criticism and Theory. As part of her socially engaged work, Liesching is also a youth educator focused on image making, visual literacy and self-publication as vehicles for expression and empowerment.

Admission to the exhibition is free. For more information, write to us at info@phmuseumlab.com.