At the half-way point along South Africa's great highway - the N1 running from Cape Town to Johannesburg - lies the small town of Beaufort West. With its prison in the middle of town, on an island in the highway, it's a surreal road-stop that offers everything a traveller might want - food, gas, a place to stay, an hour of sex. Mikhael Subotzky considers the town, its vivid characters and poignant social landscapes, in a photo essay that confronts central issues of contemporary South African society. His first photobook, it is exquisitely produced on a large portfolio scale. With an introduction by leading South African writer Jonny Steinberg and Subotzky's own commentary on the photographs, the book is both a document of social evidence and the visual manifesto of the best of the new wave of South African art photographers. 80pp, UK. CHRIS BOOT.

The culmination of over ten years work by the award winning South African photographer Jodi Bieber. Beginning in 1994 after South Africa's first democratic elections, the book focuses on a generation of young people growing up on the fringes of South African society. Bieber takes us into one of the toughest neighbourhoods of Johannesburg - into a world where gangs rule, where children live with HIV/Aids, and where prostitutes vary their rates depending on the colour of their clients. 144pp, UK. DEWI LEWIS PUBLISHING.

A collection of b/w photographs capturing the spirit of 1950s South Africa. Many of these images have become iconic, from the photographs of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment, to the destruction of Sophiatown and to the portrait of 'Mr Drum'. 125pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE, 1919825711

2001 Hardback

A rich collection of vivid photographs, capturing images of the homes, cultures, people and streets of the communities of the Cape Flats. Working during the late 1980s, Ledochowski highlights the vibrant cultures of the area. Maps, gloss, 210pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNISA PRESS, 0620304588

2003 Paperback

Setting out with these words from Abdullah Ibrahim's jazz composition Manenberg, Lurie explores its significance in a series of black and white portraits of a place and a community that exist on the very fringes of Cape Town. Built as a dormitory suburb for the working people of the city, it is the product and symbol of dispossession and exclusion from Cape Town's heart. Here, in a mirror image of the beautiful and desirable city, life is lived at the very edge. And yet for all the distance that separates the township from the wealthy suburbs and central district, Manenberg is integral to the city. 128pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS.

A 'provocative body of photographic work' that 'uses the metaphorical power of shadow to foreground the shifting visibility of South Africa's black population post apartheid'. With essays by Leslie King-Hammond, Mongane Wally Serote and Lemuel Johnson. 31 photos in full colour. 96pp. USA. WASHINGTON U P, 0295981180

This book celebrates some 50 projects of architectural merit that have been designed by South African architects since 1994. Through both text and full-colour photographs it explores the ways in which they have contributed to change in this country through their work and to the development of a new sense of cultural identity. 220pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS.

The long-awaited anthology of David Goldblatt's works, published on the occasion of the 2006 exhibition in Arles (with Martin Parr as curator), which afterward will tour internationally. David Goldblatt is South Africa's most important photographer. He has produced a body of work that is an original and extensive study of South Africa during and after apartheid. Goldblatt's photo-graphs are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The South African National Gallery, Cape Town; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and in The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2006, Goldblatt won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. 256pp, ITALY. CONTRASTO PRODUCTIONS.

Retrospective of South Africa's pioneering documentary photographer with essays by leading writers and art historians. B/w ill, notes, bib, SPAIN. ACTAR, 8495273780

2001 Paperback

A stunning array of photographic portraits follows two major themes in the South African photographer's work--Beaches, portraits of beach bums, children, swimmers, and others taken at dusk and dawn on a Cape Town beach, and Uniforms, photographs of police, school children, security guards, and other people in uniform. 224 colour photos, 224pp, UK. BOOTH CLIBBORN EDITIONS

Accessible introduction to a wide range of painted homesteads belonging to rural black South Africans. Text in English, French and German. Col ill, 96pp, SOUTH AFRICA. STRUIK, 1868725170

A personal selection of Obie Oberholzer's best work over thirty years of journeys through Southern Africa. His photographs are shot with humour and compassion, and often breathtaking beauty. An addictive collection with many previously unpublished works. Also includes a selection of b/w photography. 132pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY [JUTA], 1919930027

Dramatic black and white photographs capturing the joy and optimism of Nelson Mandela's inauguration. 140pp, SOUTH AFRICA. NOLWAZI EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS, 1875048030

Visual description of the inequalities that exists between the different races that reside in Cape Town with Table Mountain as the on characteristic that they all have in common. Images of Table Mountain depicts the vast differences between Capetonians as well as their interrelations. The black and white images strongly depict the difference in the lifestyles and class of Capetonians. 132pp, SOUTH AFRICA. BELL-ROBERTS PUBLISHING.

Collection of photographs on South Africa's transitional years, by an award win-ning cameramn killed during street violence nine days before the 1994 elections. 144pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

Series of colour photographs that follow the fortunes of Johannesburg’s inner city residents as a new African city is forged after the apartheid era. Unusual format, this book unfolds concertina-style and when opened up, end-to-end, is 16 metres long. SOUTH AFRICA. STE PUBLISHERS.

The new Constitutional Court of South Africa was inaugurated in 2004, ten years after the demise of apartheid and South Africas first democratic elections that brought the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela to power. This book celebrates not only the architectural innovations in the structure, such as the large-scale use of a passive heating and cooling system, but the atmosphere and mood of the Court, its openness, its ability to convey warmth and dignity at the same time, its reflection of the South African landscape and climate, its relationship to the surrounding metropolis, and its incorporation of the troubled history of the site the old Fort Prison of Johannesburg. Photographs by Angela Buckland. 178pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID KRUT PUBLISHING.

Black-and-white photographs of 120 leading South African artists, writers, journalists. musicians and entertainers taken in their own homes. Accompanying text in English and Afrikaans. 260pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

A selection of photographs by leading South African photographers capturing the spirit of the first decade of democracy. Chapters include cityscapes, youth, shelters, worship, sport and public affairs. Introduction by Mandla Langa. 280pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KMM REVIEW PUBLISHING, 0620320273

2004 Hardback

A volume of photographs of South African people commissioned for an exhibition to launch South Africa's new Constitution Court. Also exhibited at the Photographer's Gallery in London 2004. Each photograph, from teen beauty queens to residents of old homes, and from long term prisoners to babies suffering from HIV/AIDS is accompanied by text explaining their story. 160pp, UK. TROLLEY, 1904563317

A record of the author's fifth photographic journey through Africa taking in parts of Kenya, Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands, Mpumulanga, the Drakensberg, Grahamstown, the Overberg, the Hantam Karoo, and Luderitz. Large format, many colour photos, 179pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP/NEW AFRICA BOOKS.

Photographs of Strijdom van der Merwe's transient creations before they fade, are blown, or washed away. Eschewing the confines of studio and art gallery, he has made the vast outdoors his canvas, seeing possibilities in the patterns of the earth and its seasons. His media is the natural world, using sand, water, wood, rocks, taking into account the diversity of possibilities and development offered by the reflection of the sun and the movements of the wind. 125 col plates, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

Coffee Table book of photography which looks into the homes of Cape Town's shack-lands. Includes poetry, interviews, quotes and history. 146 illustrations, 140 in colour. 146pp, UK. THAMES & HUDSON.

2002 0500511055 Paperback

David Goldblatt's work reflects a life-long exploration of the relationship between individual South Africans and the society they live in. This, his first extended photographic essay, was compiled in the 1960s. When finally published in 1975 as 'Some Afrikaners Photographed', the title angered many. Considered one of the major photographic works in this genre, the original book has never been reprinted and is almost impossible to obtain. Some Afrikaners Revisited not only offers an additional twenty images from the period not included in the original book, but also includes Goldblatt's notes on how these studies came into being, an essay by Ivor Powell and Antjie Krog's response to the images. 235pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Presents a multi-hued collection of interiors that range from Dutch colonial to traditional wood and thatched-roof houses, townships, modern city apartments, and funky artist homes, reflecting the country's tumultuous political history, while celebrating its rich culture. 192pp, GERMANY. TASCHEN.

A collection of photographs showing the past and present of Soweto. Photographers include Alf Kumalo, Ernest Cole, Jurgen Schadeberg and Peter Magubane from the older generation, and Jodi Bieber, Themba Hadebe, Ruth Matau and Victor Matom from the younger generation. 128 pages, 83 illustrations in colour and duplex. Also includes an interview with Nelson Mandela. GERMANY. ARNOLDSCHE VERLAGSANSTALT, 3897900130

A collection of photographs chronicling the lives of people living in modern Soweto. 99pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE, 191982572X

A photographic journey through Cape Town's District Six. The luminous b/w images are accompanied by text by Brian Barrow. 64pp, SOUTH AFRICA. TAFELBERG PUBLISHERS LTD, 0798143878

This volume features the work of eight photographers whose careers straddle South Africa's transition to democracy. Almost all of them were members of Afrapix, the collective photo agency that played a central role in documenting the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, more personal forms of photographic expression were suppressed as photographers responded to the imperative to record their society in turmoil; indeed, some saw themselves as activists in the struggle for democracy. The negotiated political settlement, culminating in the inclusive elections in April 1994, freed them to explore other, less overtly political subjects, broaden their scope beyond South Africa's borders, and re-examine their approach to photography. While there are obvious disjunctures between the earlier and later photographs, there are also significant continuities, and some images ask searching questions of the post-apartheid order. Includes the work of: David Goldblatt, George Hallett, Eric Miller, Cedric Nunn, Guy Tillim, Paul Weinberg, Graeme Williams and Gisele Wulfsohn. 160pp, SOUTH AFRICA. HIGHVELD PRESS.

In a career spanning over half a century, Schadeberg has come to represent much more than the prototype of the visual storyteller. He epitomises the very best in photojournalism, a photographer with an uncanny sense of historical timing. This overview of his collection includes photographs in a distinct South African context, juxtaposed with timeless images of an international nature. The seminal works are represented, together with photographs published never before. Chronology, 142pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.