What is this place?: The visual simulacrum of South Africa in the Covid-19 lockdown - The Mail & Guardian

The photographic coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic in the international news publications that I turn to in times of crisis have left me with the sense that I live in no place on earth.

With most of the world’s population confined indoors, relying on the internet to exist in the world outside, whatshowed decades ago — that media images have become more real than the real — has perhaps come to pass. With no way of going out to collect real images, I am left only with the simulacrum of South Africa erected by the online news media.

My experiment worked on another level, though. It showed me that the online visual landscape has been sanitised of all elements that would render a comprehensive, expansive vision of South Africa. I was struck by another finding. There is another element to these images that must be kept outside the frame, all the more vivid for the exclusion: the shadowy other end of the spectrum which has made South Africa the most inequitable place on earth.

Thank you for great journalism

Nice, well-written article. I had not ever come across 'simulacrum', figured the Latin roots, but thought it was a new journalism expression. And yet, a real word, no less. Live and learn.

It can be that news does not depict 'vision' but scenes that otherwise go unnoticed. Still, if I were in your shoes, I might ask to see both stories, all stories, scientists and homeless, how people are coping, a full range of humanity.

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