Kind of a strange read. I'm a huge fan of Coetzee, but I'm more interested in these photographs for what they can tell me about Coetzee the author (biographically) than I am in their artistic merits. The author of this article seems intent on ascribing an artistry to these photos taken by a teenager that presumes the intentionality of his writing of later years. I'm not saying it's not there, but saying, "[t]he images conjure Waiting for Godot (which Coetzee would not yet, by then, have read)..." seem to undermine the premise.
It's a shame to have lost such a literary great. His work will most definitely live on.
Is he dead?
Not as far as I can tell
Could be a sly reference to Summertime, an autobiographical novel (considered the third in the sequence that begins with Boyhood and Youth) in which Coetzee dies before finishing his biography.