CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/24/2023

Themes of gender, race, class and social change in 'Events of the Social'

Zanele Muholi's indelible 2006 portrait, Martin Machapa, is reproduced from new release Events of the Social: Portraiture and Collective Agency, featuring 117 color and 115 black-and-white photographs from the world-renowned Walther Collection. Gathering work by three generations of artists—including Sammy Baloji, Jodi Bieber, Mimi Cherono Ng’ok, Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, David Goldblatt, Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Mikhael Subotzky and Muholi, among others—this volume presents a group of artists who can be seen as "agents of a postmodern paradigm shift" towards "biopolitical reflections, neocolonial critiques, gender-right advocations, ritual reactivations, multi-species theories, and political calls to action through the will of the collective," according to editor and curator Elvira Dyangani Ose.