Bruce Gilden Critiques Art Photography | A Photo Editor

Africa’s tallest residential skyscraper was completed in 1976, the same year as the Soweto student uprising, as a cylindrical palace for Johannesburg’s wealthy whites. But less than two decades later, after the end of apartheid in 1994, it had become a hub for the city’s gangs and a hotspot of crime. The core of the 54-storey complex, once thought to be prime for a ski slope, was instead filled with debris.