Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life is a photographic exhibition examining the legacy of the apartheid system and how it penetrated even the most mundane aspects of social existence in South Africa, from housing, public amenities, and transportation to education, tourism, religion, and businesses. Complex, vivid, evocative, and dramatic, it includes nearly 500 photographs, films, books, magazines, newspapers, and assorted archival documents and covers more than 60 years of powerful photographic and visual production that forms part of the historical record of South Africa. Several photographic strategies, from documentary to reportage, social documentary to the photo essay, were each adopted to examine the effects and after-effects of apartheid's political, social, economic, and cultural legacy.

Curated by Okwui Enwezor with Rory Bester, the exhibition proposes a complex understanding of photography and the aesthetic power of the documentary form and honors the exceptional achievement of South African photographers.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Mark McCain and Caro Macdonald/Eye and I, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Deborah Jerome and Peter Guggenheimer, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in honor of 30 years of committed ICP service by Willis E. Hartshorn.

About the Curators

Okwui Enwezor is Director of Haus der Kunst, Munich. Before joining Haus der Kunst, Enwezor was Adjunct Curator at ICP and Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute. Most recently he was the Artistic Director of La Triennale 2012 at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and has served as the Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997), Documenta 11 (2002), and 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008) amongst many other international exhibitions. Enwezor served as the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He is the founding publisher and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.

Rory Bester is an art historian and critic, as well as a curator and documentary filmmaker. Based at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg, his teaching and research areas include archive and museum practice, curatorial studies, exhibition histories, migration and diaspora studies, photographic histories, postcolonialism, and post-war South African art. He regularly writes art criticism for the Mail and Guardian newspaper, as well as for Art South Africa, Camera Austria and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Bester has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions in Denmark, Germany, South Africa, Sweden and the United States.

About ICP
The International Center of Photography (ICP) was founded in 1974 by Cornell Capa (1918-2008) as an institution dedicated to photography that occupies a vital and central place in contemporary culture as it reflects and influences social change. Through our museum, school and community programs, we embrace photography's ability to open new opportunities for personal and aesthetic expression, transform popular culture, and continually evolve to incorporate new technologies. ICP has presented more than 500 exhibitions, bringing the work of more than 3,000 photographers and other artists to the public in one-person and group exhibitions and provided thousands of classes and workshops that have enriched tens of thousands of students. Visit www.icp.org for more information.