INHERITANCE
by Mike Rossi
2018
What do we inherit, and what do we pass on?
Photographed within the informal settlements of South Africa, this body of work centres on the people who inhabit these spaces. Personality and circumstance emerge
through gesture and domestic detail.
Inheritance is framed not as spectacle, but as witness, an engagement with lives observed with dignity and restraint.
Two readings of the same body of work
About the work
What have the shack-dwellers of South Africa inherited?
Photographed over four years within the informal settlements outside Grabouw, Mike Rossi’s Inheritance observes
lives shaped by economic segregation, resilience and concentrated poverty.
Across these rambling communities, divided into smaller enclaves of ancestry, hierarchy and survival, the work
reveals a stark simplicity of domestic life, stripped back to the basic necessities of shelter, rest and endurance.
In such an environment, what are the chances of success, and what inheritance is passed to the next generation?
This keeps Mike’s question-led framing, which is the emotional key to the project.