The Future Was Here: an award winning look at Ponte City in South Africa
Ponte City is a 54-storey skyscraper that dominates the skyline of Johannesburg. Built as a luxury apartment building in 1976, the end of apartheid saw middle class residents moving out and urban crime moving in. In 2007 new developers set about turning what remained into a new home for young black urban professionals. The global recession of 2008 killed that dream, leaving behind a half-empty shell and pile of rubble four-stories-high. The former owners have now reposessed and residents, mostly immigrants from elsewhere in Africa, are moving back. The South African photographer Mikhael Subotzsky and British artist Patrick Waterhouse have turned the saga of Ponte City into an award-winning project at this year's French photo festival Rencontres d'Arles that runs in Arles to September 18. Stitching views of its windows, doors and playing television sets into proportional replicas of the building, they create a microcosm of precarious modernity that honours the human resilience amid its instability.
6. Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse Televisions; Ponte City 2008 - 2010.