Wake Up, This Is Joburg Photographs by MARK LEWIS Words by TANYA ZACK

Tanya Zack will be doing a book signing with Bridge Books.

A single image taken from a high rise building in inner city Johannesburg reveals 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, photographer Mark Lewis and writer Tanya Zack 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’s full
of turrets and manikins; long abandoned gold pits beneath the city where people continue to informally mine; and into lively markets, taxi depots, and residential high rises. Sharing people’s private and work lives and the extraordinary spaces of the metropolis, Lewis and Zack show that Johannesburg’s urban transformation occurs not in a series of dramatic, widescale changes but in the everyday lives, actions, and dreams of individuals.

“Wake Up, This is Joburg is a fantastic, creative work that offers a broad look at one of Africa’s most vibrant and intriguing cities. By digging down into a range of compelling stories, Mark Lewis and Tanya Zack give their readers a rich and textured entrée into the inventiveness, precarity, and contingency that shape the lived experiences of Johannesburg’s residents. Illuminating parts of the city that readers may know little or nothing about, this book is a beautifully executed, smart, and elegant contribution.” — Danny Hoffman, author of Monrovia Modern: Urban Form and Political Imagination in Liberia.

This activity is FREE. No booking is required. You just need your Contra.Joburg ticket.