Truth and Lies: Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa

by Jillian Edelstein

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up to investigate more than 30 years of human rights violations under apartheid. This book presents Jillian Edelstein's four-year project photographing the victims and perpetrators of apartheid.

Genres: South Africa, Nonfiction, History, Africa

227 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Jillian Edelstein was born and grew up in South Africa. She began working as a press photographer in Johannesburg on the Rand Daily Mail and the Star. In 1985 she emigrated to London to study. She has worked as a freelance photographer since 1986. Her portraits have appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Sunday Times Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Time, and the New Yorker. She has received a number of awards including the Kodak UK Young Photographer of the Year in 1986 and the Visa d'Or at the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan in 1997 for her early work on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally at venues including the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Photographers’ Gallery, London, the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, and the Bensusan Museum, Johannesburg. She is a member of Network Photographers and she lives with her two children in London.

Reviews

[Sergio GRANDE · Rating 4 out of 5]

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up to bring closure to the suffering of thousands of victims of three decades of state violence and Human Rights violations under Apartheid. It was heart-wrenching and mostly successful.

This book compiles many of those individual stories. The result is sad, shameful, heart-wrenching and yet uplifting. There's no other nation on earth that after centuries of institutional subjugation and humiliation would have turned its back on revenge and got on with the business of building a new country hand-in-hand with the former oppressor, they way Black South Africans did.

This should be mandatory reading in our country.

[Muphyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving collection of photographs taken during various hearings of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Some photos are haunting, and the photographer really manages to capture the depth of human pain and suffering in the faces of family members and victims. The few photos of perpetrators who came forward disturbed me the most, I think.

[Eric Etheridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning in conception as well as execution, an amazing and brave portrait and experience of the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa. I look at this all the time. Read it in tandem with Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The pictures were amazing as well as the stories. Not something you can put down.

[Beverley Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is mostly a photo book but each full page image has a story of loss.

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching.