A radical and compassionate view of African farm workers. It is a complete contrast to the glories of tribal culture, yet astonishingly elegant and poignant. After a career as a successful magazine photographer, Jackie Nickerson quit the commercial world, bought a truck and spent two and a half years traveling through Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. She photographed in rural areas and in smallholdings and on farms and on tea and coffee plantations making astonishing portraits of workers in their workplace. The result is a forging of a new visual language that creates a great sense of elegance, dignity and compassion in the face of daily toil. Farm has become a document for an agrarian culture in tatters and, in some places, on the brink of collapse. It is a view of Africa outside the language of photojournalism and the previous depictions of the glories of tribal culture. Nickerson is a new, compelling and original photographer.

Photographs by Jackie Nickerson
Published by Jonathan Cape
Edited by Mark Holborn
144 pages, 100 colour plates
28 x 34 cm
Printed hardcover
ISBN: 0-224-062689
Publication date: August 2002