Who knew Zwelethu Mthethwa went to RIT?

Zwelethu Mthethwa. Edited by Isolde Brielmaier, essay by Okwui Enwezor, Spring 2010, 113/4 x 10 in. (29.8 x 25.4 cm), 180 pages, 75 four-color images, Hardcover with jacket
ISBN 978-1-59711-113-3, $65.00; £45.00

Also available
A slipcased limited edition with print.
Please contact Aperture for information.

From the publisher:

Since Apartheid’s fall in 1994, South African photography has exploded from the grip of censorship onto the world stage. A key figure in this movement is Zwelethu Mthethwa, whose stunning portraits powerfully frame black South Africans as dignified and defiant, even under the duress of social and economic hardship. Working in urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of aspects in South Africa—from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues. His work challenges the conventions of both Western documentary work and African commercial studio photography, marking a transition away from the visually exotic and diseased—or “Afro-pessimism,” as curator Okwui Enwezor has referred to it—and employing a fresh approach marked by color and collaboration. Zwelethu Mthethwa is the artist’s long-awaited first comprehensive monograph, providing an overview of his work to-date and featuring the stunning portraits that have brought him international acclaim.
ZWELETHU MTHETHWA (born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 1960) received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, a then white’s only university he entered under special ministerial consent. He received his master’s degree while on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mthethwa has had over thirty-five international solo exhibitions and has been featured in numerous group shows, including the 2005 Venice Biennial and Snap Judgments at the International Center of Photography, New York. Mthethwa is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

ISOLDE BRIELMAIER (editor) is visiting assistant professor of art at Vassar College, and guest professor at Barnard College/Columbia University as well as an independent curator and writer. OKWUI ENWEZOR (essay) is dean of academic affairs at San Francisco Art Institute, and the former artistic director of both Documenta XI and the second Johannesburg Biennale. He is a pioneering critic and curator.