South Africa (Gerald Hoberman), by Gerald Hoberman

South Africa, by Gerald Hoberman. Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection. Cape Town, South Africa 2003. ISBN 1919734899 / ISBN 1-919734-89-9 / ISBN 9781919734897 / ISBN 978-1-919734-89-7

If this book entices fellow South Africans to take afresh look at our wonderful country, that would be the cherry on top for me, Gerald Hoberman. To present every aspect of a country and its people in one volume is beyond the scope of any book. I have selected the very best of my photographs of South Africa and I look forward to sharing them with you, joy shared is joy doubled.

Gerald Hoberman  

[...] In Fraserburg, in the Karoo, on enquiring as to the location of the town's famous dinosaur footprints, I soon found myself in the kitchen of the home of the town clerk. He treated me like one of the family and helped to arrange access to the site at short notice over a weekend. On another occasion, when I stopped to ask a fellow motorist, a local farmer, whether to turn left or right at an intersection on my way out of Grahamstown, he invited me back to his farm for tea. The entire neighbouring community went out of its way to provide me with photographic opportunities beyond my wildest imaginings. The delightfully warm response I received from the people of the Groot Marico, immortalised by the writer Herman Charles Bosman, was memorable; so too were my visits with various guides to Ndebele, Basotho, Xhosa and Zulu villages. Soweto and Boipatong were certainly quite different to what I had expected. Everywhere I went I encountered an open and spontaneous response and I am delighted to be able to share the warm interactions I had there, with you. I reflected on all these experiences several times, especially during my journey through rural Transkei, birthplace of former President Nelson Mandela, with its undulating green hills and spectacular wild coast. I hope that this book will showcase our beautiful land, give insight into the people and places that make it such an extraordinary destination, and serve as a perfect memento of a great visit to our southern shores. If this book entices fellow South Africans to take afresh look at our wonderful country, that would be the cherry on top for me. To present every aspect of a country and its people in one volume is beyond the scope of any book. I have selected the very best of my photographs of South Africa and I look forward to sharing them with you, joy shared is joy doubled.

Cape Agulhas lies at the southernmost tip of Africa. Beyond the lighthouse is the shallow Agulhas Bank, one of the richest fishing grounds in the southern hemisphere. It stretches tor a distance of 250 kilometres before dropping into the abyssal depths of the southern seas. On his homeward journey in 1488 Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias named the cape St Brendan, but it was later changed to Agulhas, probably because compass needles (agulhas) of early navigators showed no magnetic deviation from true north here.The first lighthouse was built there in 1848 and warned mariners of the treacherous coast for more than a hundred years, before it was replaced by a high-powered light in 1962.

The San, descendants of the Later Stone Age people, were hunter-gatherers, taking from the land only that which they needed to sustain themselves. Men hunted eland, elephant and other wild animals using spears or wooden bows and arrows strung with sinew, their sharp tips shaped from stone and, later, metal. Quivers were fashioned from bark and leather. From the veld women gathered roots, bulbs and wild fruit, many of which were valued for their medicinal properties. A digging stick, with a bored stone through which the shaft fitted, was used to dig for bulbs and tubers. [...]

This is an excerpt from the book: South Africa (Gerald Hoberman), by Gerald Hoberman.

Title: Namibia
Author: Don Pinnock
Photographer: Gerald Hoberman
Genre: Photobook, coffee-table book
Publisher: Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection
Cape Town, South Africa 2003
ISBN 1919734899 / ISBN 1-919734-89-9
ISBN 9781919734897 / ISBN 978-1-919734-89-7
Hardcover, dustjacket, 28 x 22 cm, 96 pages, throughout colour photographs, 1 map