Name: Wake Up, This Is Joburg
ISBN: 9781478016069

New!Websites for Authors

The co-op bookstore for avid readers

Wake Up, This Is Joburg

Tanya Zack

Hardcover

Regular price$104.95With free membership trial$79.9550% off your first book(max discount $25)+ Free shipping

Currently out of stock. Place a backorder.

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

A single image taken from a high-rise building in inner-city Johannesburg uncovers layers of history--from its premise and promise of gold to its current improvisations. It reveals the city as carcass and as crucible, where informal agents and processes spearhead its rapid reshaping and transformation. In Wake Up, This Is Joburg, writer Tanya Zack and photographer Mark Lewis offer a stunning portrait of Johannesburg and personal stories of some of the city's ordinary, odd, and outrageous residents. Their photos and essays take readers into meat markets where butchers chop cow heads; the eclectic home of an outsider artist that features turrets and full of manikins; long-abandoned gold pits beneath the city, where people continue to mine informally; and lively markets, taxi depots, and residential high-rises. Sharing people's private and work lives and the extraordinary spaces of the metropolis, Zack and Lewis show that Johannesburg's urban transformation occurs not in a series of dramatic, wide-scale changes but in the everyday lives, actions, and dreams of individuals.

Book Details

Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: Jan 6th, 2023
Pages: 368
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.21in - 6.22in - 1.18in - 1.85lb
EAN: 9781478016069
Categories: • Photoessays & Documentaries• Sociology - Urban• Africa - South - Republic of South Africa

About the Author

Tanya Zack is an urban planner, writer, and Visiting Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Mark Lewis is a photographer who lives in Johannesburg.

What people are saying

Duke University Press

@DukePress

1 year

Disseminating knowledge—through the publication of printed books, periodicals, and electronic files—beyond the confines of the University's campus.

On May 27, @tanya_zack, author of "Wake Up, This is Joburg," joins Tshidiso Moletsane and Sunday Times book editor Jennifer Platt to discuss some new facets of South Africa’s biggest city at a session of @KingsmeadBF. https://t.co/GoS5isKl7p https://t.co/r4tPgzJmaI

twitter.com

The Conversation Africa

@TC_Africa

2 years

The world's leading publisher of research-based news and analysis. A unique collaboration between academics and journalists. Free to read and republish.

Wake Up, This is Joburg is a collaboration between photographer Mark Lewis and urban planner and writer @tanya_zack. Striking images and beautiful texts follow 10 stories the team discovered in urban Johannesburg https://t.co/jn9QZ7dY9L

The Sunday Times brings you news, investigative exposés, sport, opinion, entertainment plus so much more. For subscription queries - 0860-525-200

Wake Up, This is Joburg is a collaboration between photographer Mark Lewis and urban planner and writer Tanya Zack. Striking images and beautiful texts follow 10 stories the team discovered in urban Johannesburg https://t.co/lAhCq2aVd5

twitter.com

Praise for this book

"These pieces are sometimes sad, sometimes inspiring, and add up to a complicated picture of a city of contradictions. . . . Wake Up, This Is Joburg tells its range of interesting stories well, through on-the-ground reporting, with ample interviews and context, letting a variety of people around Johannesburg talk about both the struggles and successes of everyday life in the inner city."
--Jeff Fleischer "Foreword" (11/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Wake Up, This Is Joburg effectively frames Johannesburg as one of the continent's most important entrepôts where people journey from various nodes of the country and continent to earn a decent living. Rather than criminalise their activities, these stories provoke readers to 'wake up' and pay attention to those who make this city a fascinating but enigmatic place to live."--Denise L. Lim "Urban Studies" (4/19/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"There is rich nuance in Tanya Zack's flowing, sensitive narrative and Mark Lewis's striking photography. The stories they tell are deeply human and individualised, yet cleverly interwoven within Johannesburg's broader racial, social and economic anomalies. . . . This is an extraordinary book, with beautiful, powerful photographs and a sensitive, robust and accessible narrative. It provides a fresh perspective on life, struggle, survival, creativity and uniqueness in one of Africa's major cities."--Chris Heymans "litnet" (8/22/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"As a collection of salient imagery and anecdotes, the book is a poignant refutation of the cultural anger gripping White South African communities, and a visually arresting plea to recognise the city as an important cosmopolitan hub. As South Africa's metropoles continue to undergo major political change, Wake Up, This Is Joburg is a critical reminder that it is the barriers to integration constructed by the white political class that have created the country's political woes."--Joe Konieczny "Visual Studies" (10/9/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"The book explores the city's inconsistencies in a nuanced manner with fantastic photographs -- emphasising the routines, rhythms and rituals of the people with conflicting worldviews who make the city tick. Surprising aspects of Johannesburg were revealed to me, broadening my own interpretation of the jolly, jaded city."--Celeste Theron "Vrye Weekblad" (3/8/2024 12:00:00 AM)

"Zack and Lewis's beautiful, unusual, and challenging book condenses many of [Johannesburg's] obstinate contradictions, without judgment, policy prescriptions, or an attempt to aggressively overtheorize Joburg into something unified. Its value is not just in its thoughtful presentation of a complicated city but also in its emphasis on the humanity, if not always the humaneness, of contemporary urban life."--Nicky Falkof "Cultural Politics" (9/19/2024 12:00:00 AM)

What people are saying

Duke University Press

@DukePress

1 year

Disseminating knowledge—through the publication of printed books, periodicals, and electronic files—beyond the confines of the University's campus.

twitter.com

The Conversation Africa

@TC_Africa

2 years

The world's leading publisher of research-based news and analysis. A unique collaboration between academics and journalists. Free to read and republish.

twitter.com