Available Light

Daniel Magaziner teaches South African and nineteenth- and twentieth-century African history at Yale University. He is the author of The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977 and The Art of Life in South Africa.

In this outstanding book, Dan Magaziner provides a riveting portrait of Omar Badsha, one of South Africa’s great photographers and public historians, whose art and activism confronted racial oppression and forged non-racial realities. The book is a deep, sympathetic account of a complex, driven, and empathetic individual who was at the center of many of the major currents of South Africa’s resistance history. Available Light brings Magaziner’s formidable talents as a writer and historian to Badsha's compelling life and powerful art. - Sean Jacobs, The New School, founder and publisher of Africa Is a Country Available Light is the kind of book you get when an academically trained historian meets a self-conscious and self-assured historical subject. From the sparks and flares of an exchange of words, something unique and enigmatic arises that testifies to the art of making history. Daniel Magaziner’s spirited and eloquently enthusiastic casting of Omar Badsha brings us to the brink of joy and sadness that preoccupied a generation of photographers, artists, and poets who indefatigably shaped and gave form to the struggle against apartheid. Guided by passion and politics, forged through networks that include luminaries such as Mafika Gwala and Dumile Feni, we encounter a weaving of an idea of non-racialism from strands of deep emotional ties and solidarities. In this page-turner of historical writing, filled as it is with historical meaning and evocative sentience, we learn that the struggle against apartheid necessitated foresight, desire, and insight. Apartheid was ultimately defeated because it proved no match for the intellectual prowess and aesthetic discernment of those who committed themselves to fighting a pernicious sensory order. - Premesh Lalu, University of the Western Cape