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Interior Relations
While Ian van Coller was growing up in the 1970s, the black women working in his parents upper class home in a whites-only suburb of Johannesburg were valued as members of the family. Nannies and maids who helped raise the children and run the household, they were ever-present confidants and friends. And yet they were conspicuously absent from family vacations and photo albums.
Apartheid, though it has been officially consigned to history, continues to live on in nearly a million South African homes where blacks still serve the needs of the white minority. Ian van Coller s first monograph, Interior Relations, deftly probes this enduring racial fault line with a simple yet elegant he has asked black housekeepers, nannies and maids to wear their finest clothes, and to sit for formal portraits in the homes they care for.
Though the subjects' white employers are never shown, evidence of their privilege crowds around the women, forever out of every portrait a cameo of apartheid in redux.
For Sindiwe Magona, one of South Africa's most celebrated black writers, working as a domestic in her youth provided a desperately needed but meager income that she was forced to supplement by selling sheep heads on the street. Serving white families represented a constriction of the soul that was broken only by the force of her will to become a writer.
Magona's introduction channels the voices of van Coller s subjects through her own years as a domestic worker. Ian van Coller s delicate and reverential portraits, coupled with Sindiwe Magona s searing essay, offer a starkly original view of the intersection of race and class in post-apartheid South Africa.
Apartheid, though it has been officially consigned to history, continues to live on in nearly a million South African homes where blacks still serve the needs of the white minority. Ian van Coller s first monograph, Interior Relations, deftly probes this enduring racial fault line with a simple yet elegant he has asked black housekeepers, nannies and maids to wear their finest clothes, and to sit for formal portraits in the homes they care for.
Though the subjects' white employers are never shown, evidence of their privilege crowds around the women, forever out of every portrait a cameo of apartheid in redux.
For Sindiwe Magona, one of South Africa's most celebrated black writers, working as a domestic in her youth provided a desperately needed but meager income that she was forced to supplement by selling sheep heads on the street. Serving white families represented a constriction of the soul that was broken only by the force of her will to become a writer.
Magona's introduction channels the voices of van Coller s subjects through her own years as a domestic worker. Ian van Coller s delicate and reverential portraits, coupled with Sindiwe Magona s searing essay, offer a starkly original view of the intersection of race and class in post-apartheid South Africa.
68 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 2011
About the author
Sindiwe Magona
61 books88 followersSindiwe Magona is a South African writer.
Magona is a native of the former Transkei region. She grew up in Bouvlei near Cape Town, where she worked as a domestic and completed her secondary education by correspondence. Magona later graduated from the University of South Africa and earned her Masters of Science in Organisational Social Work from Columbia University.
She starred as Singisa in the isiXhosa classic drama Ityala Lamawele.
She worked in various capacities for the United Nations for over 20 years, retiring in 2003.
In the 2013 computer-animated adventure comedy film Khumba she was the voice actor for the character Gemsbok Healer.
She is Writer-in-Residence at the University of the Western Cape and has been a visiting Professor working at Georgia State University.
Magona is a native of the former Transkei region. She grew up in Bouvlei near Cape Town, where she worked as a domestic and completed her secondary education by correspondence. Magona later graduated from the University of South Africa and earned her Masters of Science in Organisational Social Work from Columbia University.
She starred as Singisa in the isiXhosa classic drama Ityala Lamawele.
She worked in various capacities for the United Nations for over 20 years, retiring in 2003.
In the 2013 computer-animated adventure comedy film Khumba she was the voice actor for the character Gemsbok Healer.
She is Writer-in-Residence at the University of the Western Cape and has been a visiting Professor working at Georgia State University.
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