William Kentridge is an artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The latter are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These palimpsest-like drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art. Kentridge has created art work as part of design of theatrical productions, both plays and operas. He has served as art director and overall director of numerous productions, collaborating with other artists, puppeteers and others in creating productions that combine drawings and multi-media combinations.

Rosalind C. Morris is professor of anthropology at Columbia University. She is the author of Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories in East and Southeast Asia, In the Place of Origins: Modernity and its Mediums in Northern Thailand, and New Worlds from Fragments: Film, Ethnography, and the Representation of Northwest Coast Cultures.