Archive: Issue No. 59, July 2002

One of the most respected photographers of the struggle years, when he was a member of the Afrapix collective and a photographer on the newspaper New Nation, Santu Mofokeng's black and white photographs provide enduring images of great humanity, recording not only the harshness but also the moments of happiness, and the unquenchable human spirit which kept people going through those times.

In 1989, his interest took a new turn in the wake of post solo-exhibition blues when he began to question the commodification of his work by the art world. Mofokeng decided to start asking black families if he might make photographic copies of their old family photographs, covering the period 1890-1950. State sponsored publications, like the tourist brochure entitled Native Life in South Africa (1936) seemed intent on portraying black people as resistant to change, perpetually locked into old rural tribal cultures. Mofokeng wished to recover a different reality, showing the sophistication and richness of black family life, thus setting up an archive of inestimable value to the country.

Shown as a projection piece on the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997, 'The Black Photo Album/Look at Me' gave further impetus to Mofokeng's growing international reputation. In recent years, he has also begun to curate photographic shows both locally and overseas.

"As a photographer, I am aware of the nature of my enterprise, its possibilities, its limitations, and its tendency unwittingly to reproduce some of the hierarchies that it is in theory setting out to attack. A successful portrait is a negotiation between the person depicted and the photographer. It is worth making a note that this negotiation is not one that occurs between equals (the dice is always loaded in favour of the photographer). Most of the time the subject has an idea of how they would like to be represented. I frame the image. I choose the viewpoint. I notice the light. I choose the depth of focus, what to accent, what to leave out. Hopefully, this collaboration results in a successful image ..." - Interview with Sam Raditlhalo, Santu Mofokeng, Taxi-004 2001, David Krut Publishing

Santu Mofokeng is one of the four South Africans exhibiting on Documenta11, on in Kassel, Germany, until September 15. Here, Mofokeng is showing what he describes as landscape photography, investigating, as the Documenta catalogue puts it, "the historically rooted relationship between land, representation and cultural identity".

During a working period in Germany in 1998, Mofokeng took a series of photographs at Auschwitz. The 28 photographs which made up the 'Chasing Shadows: End of the Line' portfolio seemed almost banal in the soft silvery greyness of the railways lines and buildings. It was the realisation of what was being imaged which imparted a chill to the work. Shown at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm at the end of that year, the catalogue commented, "Mofokeng's photographs are an exploration of a particular kind of Europe, of an African coming to Europe, an African whose visual language has always been couched in the political terms of the colony. In bending towards that which is not comfortable, Mofokeng's project is an expanding exploration of the banality of horror in Europe."

1956	Born in Johannesburg, South Africa
1988-98	Documentary photographer/researcher, Institute for Advanced Social Research, University of the Witwatersrand
1985-92	Member Afrapix collective
1987-88	Photographer, New Nation newspaper
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2000	'Sad Landscapes' - Camouflage Gallery, Johannesburg
1999	'The Black Photo Album/Look at Me' - FNAC Montparnasse, France
1998	'Lunarscapes' - Nederland Foto Instituut, Rotterdam, Holland
1997	'Chasing Shadows' - Gertrude Posel Gallery, University of Witwatersrand
1994	'Rumours/The Bloemhof Portfolio' - Market Gallery, Johannesburg
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2002	Documenta11, Kassel, Germany
2001-2	'The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-94, Munich, Berlin, Chicago, New York 'Dislocation: Images and Indentity' - Madrid, Bilbao
2000	'The Song of the Earth' - Museum Friderichianum, Kassel
1998	'blank_ Architecture, apartheid and after' - Nederlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, Holland 'Dreams and Clouds' � Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden
1997	'Alternating Currents' - 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Electric Workshop, Johannesburg
1996	'In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the present' - Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
Awards and Fellowships:
2001	DAAD Fellowship, Berlin, Germany
1998	Kunstlerhaus Worpswede Fellowship, Germany
1992	1st Mother Jones Award for Africa
1991	Ernest Cole Scholarship