Young photographer Sabelo Mlangeni.has been announced as the 2009 winner of the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts. This R100 000 award is made annually to a young artist who has received critical recognition but is hampered financially in realising his or her potential work. The artist may use the award to work towards an exhibition, study further, travel or produce a publication. 

Mlangeni was born in 1980 at Driefontein, near Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga. He moved to Johannesburg in 2001 where he studied at the Market Photo Workshop,...

Young photographer Sabelo Mlangeni.has been announced as the 2009 winner of the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts. This R100 000 award is made annually to a young artist who has received critical recognition but is hampered financially in realising his or her potential work. The artist may use the award to work towards an exhibition, study further, travel or produce a publication. 

Mlangeni was born in 1980 at Driefontein, near Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga. He moved to Johannesburg in 2001 where he studied at the Market Photo Workshop, and graduated in 2004. His work attracted critical notice on the occasion of his first solo show at Warren Siebrits in Johannesburg in 2007. He exhibited a series of scenes of women cleaning the inner city entitled ‘Invisible Women’ which he photographed over an eight-month period at night between 11pm and 3.30am.

The annual Tollman Award for the Visual began in 2003 and has since been awarded to Wim Botha, Churchill Madikida, Mustafa Maluka, Zanele Muholi, Nicholas Hlobo and Paul Edmunds.
Wim Botha, Churchill Madikida, and Nicholas Hlobo all went on to receive the Standard Bank Young Artist Award. The work that Madikida produced after his award was selected for Documenta XI. Zanele Muholi recently completed her Masters degree in documentary photography at Ryerson University in Toronto and has undertaken residencies at MIT in Boston and Thami Mnyele in Amsterdam. Hlobo has exhibited widely abroad in solo projects including at the ICA in Boston and at Tate Modern in London. Wim Botha and Mustafa Maluka have both enjoyed successful solo exhibitions in Europe. Paul Edmunds produced a catalogue on his work with the proceeds of the award and he is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in Cape Town. 

The selection committee for the award consists of Walter Oltmann, Rochelle Keene, David Brodie, Sophie Perryer, Joost Bosland and Michael Stevenson. Annually a short list is prepared for the Tollman family and this year, Mlangeni’s selection was unanimous. Because of the family’s historical close association with central Johannesburg where they established their first hotel in the late 1950’s, the photographer’s images resonated strongly with them.

The award is an acknowledgement of the family’s commitment to the continuation of the extra-ordinary creativity and enjoyment that they have derived from South Africa art over the past fifty years.