Dale Yudelman Prints

Dale Yudelman’s career in photography has led him through two eras of South African history as well as across several continents. Born in Johannesburg, he began photographing at a young age under the tutelage of his father and was barely out of his teens in 1979 when he landed a job as staff photographer at South Africa’s largest daily newspaper The Star. This was a time of intense social and political turmoil and Yudelman worked simultaneously on press photography for The Star and his own personal body of work “Suburbs in Paradise,” Taken in and around the suburbs of Johannesburg between 1979 and 1985, this series communicates the reality of life in South Africa under Apartheid with a poetic, metaphorical vision quite distinct from reportage.

Yudelman’s compassionate and imaginative honesty speaks truths about South African culture that is still relevant to an understanding of the culture today. In 1986 Yudelman left South Africa, working as a freelance photographer first in London and later in Los Angeles. He returned to the newly democratic South Africa in 1996 and currently lives in Cape Town. For the past five years he has been working collaboratively with painter Arlene Amaler-Raviv, creating multi-media images addressing a wide range of social issues - their most recent work ‘Live Stock’ was exhibited at the 8th Havana Biennale, Cuba and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway. Yudelman’s latest photographs from his ongoing series ‘Reality Bytes’ have been featured in numerous shows in South Africa, Europe and the USA.
In 2012 he won the prestigious Ernest Cole Award for photography in South Africa.