IMAGES

First Edition: 76 pages with a foreword, poetic commentary and captions by James Mathews and 72 pages of black & white photographs by Hallett, illustrated light card covers - paperback - the covers are slightly worn.

'George Hallett (1942-2020) was born in District Six, Cape Town. He then moved to Hout Bay, Cape Town to live with his grandparents. Thereafter he moved to live in Silvertown, Athlone, with his parents. Hallett attended South Peninsula High School. His early inspiration to become a photographer came from the movies he saw at the Friday night film show at the primary school in the fishing village of Hout Bay. On the way home, as friends enacted scenes from the films, Hallett would be thinking about the camera angles, composition and dramatic lighting that impressed him in the films.

'At the age of 20 he began a correspondence course in photography with the City and Guilds of London. He freelanced for the famous South African magazine Drum, but the politics of segregation made it virtually impossible to find other work. He lived an unsettled existence for many years, living and working in a variety of capacities abroad in different cities in the UK, France, Holland and the United States before finally re-settling in his hometown in 1995. As well as working as a documentary photographer, he has practised small-scale farming near Perpignan in France, designed book covers in London, UK and has lectured and exhibited widely in other parts of Europe and the USA.

'Before leaving apartheid South Africa in 1970 and going into self-imposed exile, Hallett was persuaded by the author James Matthews to photograph District Six, an area that the apartheid regime declared as white, forcing all black inhabitants to be evacuated and their property destroyed. Hallett's poignant documentation was donated to the District Six Museum.

'BLAC Publishing House was founded by James Mathews in 1979 and Images was the first publication. BLAC stands for Black Literature, Arts and Culture. Ultimately, BLAC Publishing House was financially short-lived due to state interference, security branch harassment, and financial exclusion. However, its 1979 publication of Images remains a monumental symbolic victory that shattered the enforced cultural desert of the apartheid regime'