ZEKE Magazine: Spring 2023.2

LOVE FROM MANENBERG
By Sarah Stacke
Kehrer, 2023 | 256 pages | $55
Love from Manenberg looks at
life in Manenberg, South Africa,
in particular the experiences of
women and their children. The work
makes room for complex narratives
pushed aside by the media and shows
the ways families look to the future
and carry the joy, grief, and everyday
realities of life in a community
plagued by gang violence. Through
fortitude and faith, they persevere
and prosper.
Stacke first photographed
Manenberg, a neighborhood of
Cape Town, in June 2011. For over a
decade, the women of the Lottering,
Pietersen, and Adams families shared
their lives, showing the texture, unity,
and comfort of Manenberg – their
home. The title of the book reflects the
love these women embody, but also
describes the relationships Stacke has
formed with them. They have become
a part of the fabric of each other’s
lives.
ON RAPE: AND
INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE
By Laia Abril
Dewi Lewis, 2022
228 pages | $50
On Rape is a visualization of
the origin of gender-based
stereotypes and myths, as
well as the failing structures of law
and order, that continue to perpetuate
rape culture. Abril explores why the
structure of justice and law enforcement
are not only failing survivors but
actually encouraging perpetrators by
preserving particular power dynamics
and social norms. To avoid feeding
the systemic victim-blaming society,
Abril switches the visual narrative from
the survivors to the institutions, allowing
her the opportunity to address
transgenerational trauma and social
accountability. Her book interweaves
compiled testimonies, political proclamations,
historical archives, popular
and traditional beliefs, as well as
society’s structural failures to deal
with sexual violence. On Rape is the
second chapter of Laia Abril’s longterm
project A History of Misogyny,
a visual compilation of historical and
contemporary comparisons of the systemic
control of women in the world.
WITCH HUNT
By Christo Geoghegan
DAP, 2023 | 424 pages | $55
“Shawi” is a term used in
Balsapuerto, a deeply isolated
district of Peru, to define
Indigenous persons who are skilled
in the use of ethnomedicine and its
botanical as well as spiritual components.
In 2011, over the course
of 10 months, 14 Indigenous Shawi
healers were brutally murdered for the
region’s ultimate crime: witchcraft. The
most perplexing aspect of this story is
not the modern-day witchhunt, but the
bizarre conspiracy theories around the
killing spree.
Christo Geoghegan’s Witch Hunt is
a fascinating investigation into these
murders. This real-world horror story
unfolds through photographs, original
artwork, interviews, police records, and
other archival materials. His haunting
color portraits bring the community
characters in this stunning account to
life. As you turn the pages through this
collection of evidence, the truth behind
the murdered and their perpetrators
becomes as mysterious as the alleged
witchcraft itself.
ZEKE SPRING 2023/ 61