Ponte City from Yeoville Ridge (from Ponte City series)

Born in Cape Town and living and working in Johannesburg, Mikhael Subotzky primarily works across film, video and installation. Patrick Waterhouse was born in Bath, England and works across photography, drawing and graphic design. He and Subotzky collaborated together on the acclaimed Ponte City series. This sprawling six-year project began in 2008, and is replete with photographs, documents, interviews and ephemera from Johannesburg’s Ponte City tower. The work sets out to examine the lives of the inhabitants and the complex politics associated with this iconic site. The fifty-four storey skyscraper dominates the Johannesburg skyline, and is the tallest residential building in Africa. Its history is marred with grim tales of rampant drug use, frequent suicides and a four-storey pile of rubbish in its central core. Its evolution from its inception as an aspirational place for whites to live during the apartheid regime, to the chaos which followed in the nascent democracy era, charts an inverted history of the lives of the inhabitants being pulled by the forces of modernism and Apartheid ideology. Ponte City is a prism through which the complicated and turbulent histories of Johannesburg and South Africa can be examined in a suitably high-octane fashion. In Ponte City from Yeoville Ridge we see three monks on their knees praying against the backdrop of the tower and the Johannesburg skyline. The scene appears at once futuristic and ancient.
Mikhael Subotzky became a Magnum member in 2011. He and Patrick Waterhouse were awarded the Deutsche Börse photography prize in 2015 and the Discovery Award at the Rencontres d’Arles 2011 for Ponte City. Subotzky’s work was included in that year’s 56^th Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor. He is represented by Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town and London.