Hanging on a Wire Wins Best Non-Fiction Edited Volume at the 2018 HSS Awards Evening

“Hanging on a Wire: Photographs by Sophia Klaase” was shortlisted for, and subsequently won, the 2018 Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Award for Best Non-Fiction Edited Volume. The awards were held at the John Kani Theatre at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg on 15 March 2018. Congratulations to the editors, Rick Rohde and Siona O’Connell, as well as to the photographer Sophia Klaase (“Vytjie”), who sadly passed away at the beginning of 2017.

Launched in 2016, the HSS Awards, “seek to honour the outstanding, innovative and socially responsive scholarship as well as digital contributions” that “reflect new voices of South Africa’s post-apartheid struggle”. With reference to Hanging on a Wire, the judges wrote, “The visual language of the  photographs presented in this book is a powerful account of what it means to be young, rural and poor in South Africa. The photographs cover a range of social interactions from weddings, 21^st birthday parties to funerals. But, more importantly the photographer captures people as they wish to be captured  by the camera – irreverent, jubilant, mourning and wrapped up in the insignia of popular and global cultures”.

“Hanging on a Wire: Photographs by Sophia Klaase” was published by Fourthwall Books and launched on 1 February 2017. The book is edited by Rick Rohde and Siona O’Connell, with a foreword by award winning South African writer, Zoë Wicomb. The book includes essays by Rick Rohde, Virginia MacKenny, Timm Hoffman (Plant Conservation Unit), Ben Cousins and Siona O’Connell. All photographs were taken by Sophia Klaase.

Siona remarked that, “We - Rick, Timm and I - have been forever shaped by knowing Sophia. I struggle to find the correct words to describe her - though fearless and driven are a good start but doesn’t do much to capture her unapologetic sense of humour and unique way of seeing the world. Her untimely death is South Africa’s loss as well as its challenge, a reminder that we cannot forget how we each came to be in this country and the debt that needs to be repaid to people who continue to live on the edges.”

To find out more about this book, or to order a copy, visit the Fourthwalls Books website.

The following images were taken from the HSS Awards 2018 programme:

~ Article written by Samantha Venter