Case Study · Heritage
The “Release” Sculpture · Howick Capture Site, KwaZulu-NatalFifty-one steel columns that resolve, from a single point, into the face of Nelson Mandela, marking the spot where he was captured in 1962. Jonathan Burton photographed Marco Cianfanelli's sculpture for the work that fronted explore South Africa.
The Sculpture
From the wrong angle it is fifty-one separate columns of steel. From exactly the right one, they line up into a portrait of Nelson Mandela. Scroll the time-lapse below and watch the monument assemble itself: the same shift in perspective the photography had to capture in a single frame.
Marco Cianfanelli · 2012
A cover story on heritage.
Jonathan's photograph of the Mandela sculpture carried the cover of explore South Africa, the heritage-tourism issue, “Our story untold.” The same images ran across his own editorial set of the Capture Site, shot from the angles that make the monument read.
It is a subject that rewards a photographer who understands perspective: get it wrong and it is scaffolding; get it right and it is one of the most recognisable faces of the twentieth century.
Where the images ran.
When the monument was unveiled in 2012, design and news outlets around the world told its story. Many led with Jonathan's photographs, credited “courtesy Marco Cianfanelli via Jonathan Burton.”
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Architecture, sculpture, landscape and heritage, photographed by someone who finds the single point of view that makes the picture.