Mikhael Subotzky Playing with Plastic, Toekomsrus, Beaufort West lightjet C-print on Fuji Crystal

Mikhael Subotzky Playing with Plastic, Toekomsrus, Beaufort West lightjet C-print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper 48,5 by 59,5cm Museum of Modern Art, New York, Beaufort West, 2008 Studio La Citta, Verona, Beaufort West, 2007 Goodman Gallery Cape, Cape Town, Beaufort West, 2007 FOAM (Foto Museum Amsterdam), Amsterdam, Beaufort West, 2007" "Mikhael Subotzky. (2008) Beaufort West, London: Chris Boot. Illustrated in colour on page 11 Jonny Steinberg in Mikhael Subotzky: Beaufort West, page 75: Almost every photograph carries a suggestion of theatre, and almost every theatre uses the desert as its stage. The boy on the rubbish heap who has donned the Spider-Man mask he found in the trash; the children launching the white sheet into the wind; the screaming man and the princess on their manicured horses; the white girl with the competition tag and high heels on the black-floored stage, posing for an audience off-camera; the snake and the elephant staring so very sweetly at the ill man on the bed; the prisoner lying beneath a massive mural of cacti and sand and stone, like a giant bubble representing the inside of his mind. In each photograph the subjects transport themselves elsewhere: where, precisely, we are not sure.