Ballads from the End of the Desert

Ongoing

© Michele Spatari / 2021

The Great Karoo is a semi-desert natural region in South Africa with no apparent clear boundaries.

 A haunting, biblical landscape that seems to sweep on forever. In the Karoo, South Africa’s troubled history emerges in an atlas tied together by the ephemeral, the wild, the unknown. A space frozen in time where the boundary of reality intertwines with magic, a time for dreamers and loners.

The Karoo is physically and psychologically at the heart of country: racial isolation, land inequality, discriminatory power structures in a frightening place of great heat and frosts, floods and droughts.

Ballads from the End of the Desert is a visual exploration of this biblical land at the heart of South Africa.