George Hallett: the making of an archive

Abstract

This essay focuses on the historical documentation produced by South African photographer George Hallett in South African in the late 1960s and its resonance in the book covers he designed for Heinemann’s African Writers Series in the 1970s-80s, as well as his artistic dialogue with Gavin Jantjes.
Focusing on iconography and creative processes this chapter aims to highlight the development of an informal archive and the importance of pictorial repositories well before this primary photographic material was deemed of any institutional value.
Stemming from a context of apartheid and exile, this essay attempts to make a case for contemporary forms of transmission of African histories within a Diasporic setting acting both as a creative environment, and keeper of collective memories at the junction of African and Diaspora cultures.