Chapter 6
In: District 9: Johannesburg as Nostalgic Dystopia
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Abstract
This chapter focuses on the mining landscape from a geographic point of view as a toxic post-industrial ruin. Along with their depiction in District 9, I turn to photographs by several documentary photographers concerned with the mines over the years, among others, David Goldblatt, Jason Larkin and Eva-Lotta Jansson. Their photographs reveal abstract aesthetic qualities, paradoxically portraying these sites as visually alluring. I probe this contradictory quality by considering how both the post-industrial sublime and the formless might allow one to approach District 9’s landscape from a perspective which questions the more fundamental relationship between humans and post-industrial landscapes.