This amazing set of photographs of soldiers of the Apartheid South African Army were taken by Wyeth between 1980 and 1982 (I chanced upon them recently while looking for images of Apartheid for a project I am working on.)

The photographs recall the images that used to be published in “Paratus,” the propaganda magazine of the Apartheid army. Which makes sense as Wyeth took these while serving his two years compulsory (for whites) military service.  (BTW, I know about “Paratus” because my mother used to clean houses in the white suburbs and would bring discarded issues of the magazine home for us to cut out images.)

The images were originally exhibited as part of “South Africa: Photo Statements” at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town in 1982. (Other photographers in the original exhibition included David Goldblatt, Rodney Barnett, Omar Badsha, Glynn Griffiths, Michael Barry, Jenny Altschuler, Ben MacLennan and Henion Hann.)

[Wyeth, btw, also has an amazing series of photographs documenting the 1980s club The Base/Jazz Den in Cape Town]