In the spring of 1994, Per-Anders Pettersson arrived in South Africa to cover the country’s first democratic elections, the vote that made Nelson Mandela its first black president and ended a repressive, segregated and racist state. And so began his love affair with South Africa. Over two decades he explored the country, the ‘Rainbow Nation’, questioning the complex realities of daily life.

Rainbow Transit, published by Dewi Lewis, gathers that long-term work. The book’s subject is the aftermath of a hard-won freedom that brought both rewards and new struggles: a soaring violent crime rate, disease, poverty and massive unemployment. Yet democracy also reaped astonishing wealth for a new black elite and saw the rapid emergence of a black middle class; the energy with which these so-called ‘black diamonds’ embraced capitalism was one of the most striking features of the transition. Their success also fostered a frenzied aspirational spirit amongst the poorer urban classes. During the second decade, however, greed and disillusion began to smother that hope and aspiration, a central concern of the period documented in the book.

Swedish-born Per-Anders Pettersson is an award-winning photographer whose honours include World Press Photo, PDN, POY, NPPA, CARE, CHIPP, Unicef Photo of the Year, American Photography and Commarts. He has exhibited several times at Visa Pour L’image, Perpignan, and at other festivals and galleries around the world; one major exhibition was ‘Amazon’, a two-person show with Sebastião Salgado at Somerset House, London, in November/December 2011, later in Dublin.

The book is a hardback of 160 pages with 79 colour photographs, measuring 320mm x 247mm.