The pass laws were devised as the means to do the pushing away or the pulling in. Blacks thus were a shadow of the white population, attached to the body of power but lacking substance and privilege of power. Having your identity pictured has generally not been a positive thing in South Africa. I suppress identities by pushing the face into shadow and emphasizing the figure and the forms. Then, too, there is the richness of black, itself.
Some images show the density and richness of blackness.
The Alice show is in a caf that doubles as a community center. This fall, West will celebrate his 50th birthday in Cape Town, the site of his third South African exhibition. West has traveled extensively, and his work has been exhibited and is collected in Asia, Europe and Africa, in addition to the United States.