This is What Hatred Did
Cristina de Middel
RM
& AMC Books
English
Text by Amos Tutuola
Hardcover
180 Pages
135 x 280 mm
2015
ISBN 9788416282272
“This is what hatred did” is the lapidary phrase that ends Amos Tutuola’s novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, published in 1954. Tutuola was obliged to leave Nigeria owing to the violent reactions the novel provoked. The phrase is also the starting point of the version photographer Cristina de Middel has made of the tenebrous story in the streets of Makoko, a watery slum in the city of Lagos in Nigeria. In Makoko, spirits coexist with human beings, who are unable to escape, strange rites are an everyday occurrence, and the atmosphere provides the setting for a phantasmagoric tale. The book that has resulted from the project combines the original story of the Nigerian writer with the reality of a country suffering under the heavy burden of African stereotypes. De Middel plays with the double narrative offered by text and image and the different layers of meaning produced by their union. A grey zone between documentary and fiction, which seeks to cast light on the reality of an ever more inscrutable continent.
About the Artist
Cristina de Middel (b. 1975) is a Spanish documentary photographer and artist living and working in Uruapan, Mexico. De Middel self-published The Afronauts in 2012, a photobook about the short-lived Zambian space program in Southern Africa. The book quickly sold out and the work was met with critical acclaim. She was nominated for the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for The Afronauts,. In 2013, de Middel received the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. In 2017 she became a nominee member of Magnum Photos and in 2019 an associate member.
About the Publisher
RM is one of the most prestigious publishers of art books in Latin America, focusing primarily on photography and contemporary art. It also maintains a select catalogue of Latin American literary classics. RM has published more than 190 titles by or about writers and artists of the international stature of Graciela Iturbide, Myako Ishiuchi, Carlos Amorales, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Martin Parr, Julio Cortázar, Daido Moriyama, Luis Barragán, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Masao Yamamoto, Juan Rulfo, Agustín Jiménez, Marcos López, Jeff Wall, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Paolo Gasparini, and León Ferrari
The Archive of Modern Conflict is an organisation dedicated to the collection and preservation of vernacular photographs, objects, artefacts, curiosities, and ephemera. Founded in 1991, the archive began as a collection of photographs relating to war and conflict but has since expanded its remit to become the vast and thematically diverse repository it is today.
