Wake Up, This Is Joburg

TANYA ZACK AND MARK LEWIS

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 highrises. 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.

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.

December 2022

232pages

Globalization and Neoliberalism, History > Asian History, Asian Studies > East Asia

Rights: World

January 2023

368 pages

Sociology / Urban Studies / African Studies / Art and Visual Culture / Photography

Rights: World

December 2022

392 pages

Gender and Sexuality / Queer Theory / History / World History / Cultural Studies

Rights: World