Robin Bernstein's debut publication, Mapalakata, takes readers to the edge of the South African frontier in Mpumalanga province. The title, meaning 'visitors' in Bapedi, draws from oral histories describing traders from the east who moved through southern Africa before European colonisation.
A landscape of collision and history
The work is situated on the escarpment bordering Mozambique and Eswatini, where lush cliffs abruptly pierce the hot, red earth of the lowlands. This geophysical symbol of the frontier's edge has inspired countless folk tales and marks the beginnings of the modern-day story of gold in South Africa. Today, plantations of non-native trees blanket the landscape, while mills churn steam as they pulp pine into paper. In the valleys below, gold mines that have been chiming steel against rock for over a century ring their ceaseless chorus.
Artefacts of a forgotten past
The surrounding terrain is littered with relics of another time—the remnants of a forgotten precolonial society. Mapalakata looks at the transient nature of 'visitors' to the landscape, drawing attention to how the region's history is continually rewritten as different groups attempt to erase the narratives of their predecessors, each driven to occupy the space for its resources. This process leaves an archive of physical artefacts scattered across the landscape, which become ephemeral traces of the histories that have played out.
Photographic investigation of people and place
Through a photographic investigation of these remnants and the people who now inhabit these spaces, Bernstein aims to engage with the nuances of social conditions in South Africa and consider how place roots itself in the consciousness of those who inhabit it. One image, Wild Horse (2019), shows horses speculated to be descendants of those abandoned after a failed gold rush in the region, two decades prior to the discovery of gold in Johannesburg—a formative event shaping South Africa's modern history.
Another photograph, Marycate & Sibahle (2025), captures a mother and daughter in the front room of her grandmother's home in the Emjindini location on the outskirts of Barberton. According to Bernstein, it was one of the first homes built in the location during the Group Areas Act of 1950, which enforced racially segregated neighbourhoods.
Voices from the region
Writer Desmond Latham notes: 'The name Mapalakata once meant traders. Men who came inland with cloth and beads, their packs heavy with salt and brass. They followed the flow of rivers, trading what they could carry for gold and hides and grain. The world they moved through was a web of bargains. Even now the region works with the same logic.'
Industrial relics and environmental change
Bernstein's images also document industrial relics such as the Bulembu Asbestos Mine in Eswatini, which once hosted the second longest cableway in the world for transporting asbestos to Barberton. The asbestos mining industry was terminated in the early 2000s when the substance was banned globally. 'Bulembu is hard to get to and the museum doesn't see many visitors these days,' Bernstein says.
His practice examines the sociospatial intersections of land, history and globalisation. Working between London and Cape Town, Bernstein's process is rooted in collaborative engagement, exploring the reciprocal relationship between individuals and their environments. Mapalakata is available from Gost.
