Transitions: South Africa I Market Photo Workshop

Transitions: South Africa Market Photo Workshop

On View:  April 19 – May 26, 2019

Bronx Documentary Center
614 Courtlandt Ave, Bronx, NY 10451

Transitions: South Africa is an exhibition of work produced by students, mentorship and fellowship recipients at the Market Photo Workshop from 2008 to 2018. The images presented in this exhibition aim to show the contemporary role of photography in South Africa and explore how photographers who studied at MPW view their communities and the society at large. This exhibition honours MPW’s three decades of photography, multimedia training programs, and public programming to help bring photography to the forefront of social consciousness in South Africa and around the world.

This exhibition was curated by Nathi Khumalo, Khona Dlamini, Lekgetho Makola, Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera.

Spanish translations by Maria de la Paz Galindo. 

This exhibition was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

The selected images show the myriad of experiences of South African life over the selected 10-year period. From political unrest due to service delivery failure, student protests over the inherited, exclusivist tertiary education system and the contentious issue of land ownership in a country that is still grappling with over 350 years of colonialism and land dispossession. The daily life of both South Africans and nationals from the rest of the continent are revealed through the informal economic activities of individuals as they eke out a living within an economic climate of high unemployment rates. Through the faces of young South Africans, we see hope, joy and wonder for the future.

For thirty years, the Market Photo Workshop has played a pivotal role in the training of South Africa’s photographers, ensuring that visual literacy reaches neglected and marginalised parts of our society. World-renowned photographer, David Goldblatt contributed vastly to the establishment of Market Photo Workshop in 1988 – 1999. Since then, the Photo Workshop has been an agent of change and representation, informing photographers, visual artists, educators, students and broader communities of trends, issues, and debates in photography and visual culture.

The Market Photo Workshop also runs a number of Public Programmes, which are a series of events involving and directed at professional photographers, visual artists, educators, students as well as the broader public. These Public Programmes seek to inform the trends, practices, methods, and contemporary ways of working and thinking in South African photography practice through exposure to a broad understanding of visual culture as well as a networking platform that encourages critical thinking and engagements.