I was born eThekwini (formerly Durban)*. Growing up ebhish’ laseThekwini**, summers were often the highlight of the year. My family and I would often drive to the beach in a car packed to the brim with camp chairs, cooler boxes and treats. As kids, we would sing gleefully, ‘eBhish’ Durban, ebhish’, bhish’, bhish’, Durban!’ This…
“Can the same instrument that has historically been used to enact and perpetuate violence against Black people, be reclaimed by Black people and used to undo the legacy of that violence?” Asks multidisciplinary artist Ranji Mangcu about the camera in her graduate project IQHINA. Born in Manhattan, New York, in 1998 to South African parents,…
On a pre-pandemic evening in 2019, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Dayyaan Waja through mutual friends. I remember the night vividly as a student wandering around west campus, with Dayyaan capturing moments of my friend group’s late-night adventures on camera. The videos and images he shot, I still regard today as one…
Grace De La Hunt is a Cape Town based analogue photographer whose jaw-dropping work I’ve kept a close eye on for years. De La Hunt is unlike most analogue photographers who, let’s not beat around the bush, seem to be popping up around every corner. See, her format of choice isn’t the usual 35mm, medium…
For all intents and purposes, the South African photography landscape can often come across as rather stale — with the almost overly sharp, clean-cut and airbrushed “international” editorial look akin to that of an Elle magazine — continuing to flood our social media timelines. One could argue that it simply comes down to creatives playing…
22 year old Ben Olive received a camera on his 21st birthday and has since then been capturing intimate moments on film. The Cape Town based analogue photographer focuses on conceptual portraiture but also works across different themes, creating an impressive portfolio that gives insight into Ben’s desire to test himself in everything he does….
“It is amazing, 30 years later, people going ‘oh you photographed legends.’ I guess I did, but they weren’t legends when I was taking pictures of them”. British documentary photographer, Janette Beckman, recalls thinking back to the first projects she was exposed to in New York during the rise of hip-hop and youth rebellion in…
‘My Brotha’ is an ongoing photo series that explores Urban Communities around the world, more importantly, the young Black men surrounding those communities. I want to reconstruct society’s thinking when they think of ‘Urban areas’, more importantly, the young Black men in it. For decades, kids that live in Urban areas have always gotten a…
Tara McAuliffe is a young analogue photographer from the Mother City whose work, and the intricacies thereof, shine well beyond her years. Her images shine in softness and sensitivity — creating scenarios in which it often feels like you aren’t just observing these scenes but that somehow — you’ve experienced them before. This powerful sense…
Fashion photography is equally about capturing the clothing as it is about the wearer; the bodily form brings life to the garments, and the two components work together to cement a designer’s vision for a collection. Christina Fragkou has an inimitable ability to consider both aspects when forging a photograph — one that reads of…
‘The writer counted, in the space of only four minutes, 93 native cyclists riding past the Astra theatre,’ wrote a journalist for the Star newspaper in July 1940. Standing almost 80 years later on the same corner of Louis Botha Avenue at the same time and day of the week – 6.30pm on a Monday…
It is not for nought that Black people go to the water to pray and commune with our ancestors — what the water gives us, reaches beyond the facts of this material, temporal enfleshed existence. Mare Monstrum/Drown in My Magic is Galerie Number 8 represented Austrian-Nigerian photographer David Uzochukwu’s ongoing photographic series initially began in…
