The Tierney Fellowship, presented and developed by the Market Photo Workshop in partnership with The Tierney Family Foundation, is a unique mentorship project that affords one emerging photographer the opportunity to be mentored by an established photographer for the period of one year. At the end of the grant period, recipients are expected to present a new body of work.

The primary goal of the Fellowship is to identify aspiring artists who will be tomorrow's leaders, and to assist them in overcoming challenges that photographers face...

The Tierney Fellowship, presented and developed by the Market Photo Workshop in partnership with The Tierney Family Foundation, is a unique mentorship project that affords one emerging photographer the opportunity to be mentored by an established photographer for the period of one year. At the end of the grant period, recipients are expected to present a new body of work.

The primary goal of the Fellowship is to identify aspiring artists who will be tomorrow's leaders, and to assist them in overcoming challenges that photographers face at the start of their careers.

Thabiso Sekgala is the recipient of the 2010 Tierney Fellowship and will now be able to develop his ambition to become a professional photographer through the guidance of those more experienced in the discipline.

Born in 1981 in Soweto, Sekgala joined the Market Photo Workshop in 2008 and completed both the Foundation and Intermediate courses in that same year. He has exhibited in France as part of the group show 'Cétàvoir Festival' in 2009 as well as at 'Borders' 2009 at GoetheonMain and 'Considering Documentary' 2010 at the Market Photo Workshop.

Sekgala’s proposed project for the Tierney Fellowship extends his interest in the old homelands of the apartheid era, their fraught identity at the time and their seemingly forgotten existence in the ‘new’ South Africa. His focus is particularly on the homes built in these rural areas, as infrastructure of a damned period not since considered within the current rhetoric of sustainable development and growth.

For Sekgala, portraits of people’s homes explore the realities of what ‘home’lands have been and come to signify and present a complex dialectic, exposing the gaps of modernity.

Please see http://www.tierneyfellowship.org/ for more information on the fellowship or visit http://www.marketphotoworkshop.co.za to follow this year’s fellow’s progress towards a new body of work.