Not No Place: Fragments of Johannesburg

 Not No Place is a collage of visual and written fragments on Johannesburg– historical, archival, found and self-generated. The book is the result of documenting and collecting material on the city of Johannesburg over the course of five years. It interweaves selected quotations with personal memories and reflective accounts, as well as fiction in an attempt to explore the city as both lived place and an imagined no-place (the direct translation of U-topia). A montage combining photographs, drawings, archival material and texts, it alternates between the mode of collector, witness, observer and author, taking into account the numerous representations of the city in historical writing, urban theory, film, media and fiction. Not No Place presents a collection of moments in the city’s complex history, its contemporary spatial realities as well as its future projections.

Bettina Malcomess and Dorothee Kreutzfeldt speak to their visual processes and practices informing their book-length investigation into Johannesburg, Not no Place: Johannesburg: Fragments of Spaces and Times. This intriguing and beautiful book is by no means an official biography of the city – it reads more like a richly illustrated scrapbook of ideas and reflections part made up of quotes from a multitude of sources and part made up of the authors’ personal narratives and ruminations on topics; the subheading Fragments of Spaces and Times captures it well.  It is a peripatetic amble through the history and physicality of Johannesburg, stumbling into recurring characters such as the Carlton Hotel and Nongoloza.