This exhibition was photographed by Bryan Heseltine between 1949 and 1952. It captures the impact of apartheid on both individuals and communities and reveals the effort of those in power to sanitise the brutality of the regime by portraying Black Africans, as if on the extreme edge of civilisation. This will be seen in pictures from a festival to celebrate the founding of Cape Town, which show Black Africans as quaintly ethnic, with no apparent place in a modern society. In one, an older woman squats semi-naked sharpening a spear; in another, a woman quietly weaves strands into the roof of a simple round straw hut, emphasising its distance from a modern home.

By contrast, in Clifton Street District Six Cape Town 1949-1952 (above) the five young men are clearly part of urban society; they perch on a street corner sharing a joke that could well be about the high-heeled shoes that the central hatted character is holding. This was a vibrant mixed community dating back to 1867. In 1966, District Six was declared White and 60,000 residents were forcibly relocated to segregated areas in the inhospitable Cape Flats.

Heseltine’s work has the remarkable ability to capture the unrelenting grimness of the environments in which people were placed and to show people’s strength and resilience. There are both pensive and reflective faces, and pictures of people getting on with their lives, be it hard at work or at play.

In Windermere (named for its propensity to flood), a shack made up of a patchwork of scrap materials is surrounded by unpleasant looking flood water, with two children delightfully engaged in happy play outside their miserable front door. People Apart: Cape Town Survey 1952 is at the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is open Tuesday to Sunday and on Bank Holidays, until January 8, 2012.