Among the most striking portraits in South African photographer and filmmaker Sydelle Willow Smith’s online portfolio are those taken in the Western Cape, reflecting much of what Cape Town and the wider province stand for: the engaging (solidarity and protest marches; parades; a reportage about Blikkiesdorp, no longer just a “temporary” village echoing the crudest […]
Forty-two kilometres from Umthatha, the former capital of Transkei in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is kuTsolo. It’s a small town with a name which means pointed, referring to the shape of the hills characterising the rural landscape. It is far from the scintillating big city lights, and it is home to the young and […]
Cedric Nunn's photography reflects the complex emotions of his black South African subjects, their humanity, dignity, in very personal terms.
Stanley Lumax (born in New Jersey, US where his parents, Ghanaian immigrants, settled) lives in Brooklyn. He has made a name for himself photographing hip hop and basketball culture. In our “favorite photographs series” we ask photographers who make portraits of African subjects to introduce us to their work. They pick their five favorite photographs, describe the […]
In South Africa, there was more activity in solidarity with Pussy Riot than with the Marikana miners killed by police in August 2012.
On Thursday, July 26, the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town had an opening: Mo(u)rning. Photographic and other works by Zanele Muholi. Muholi had lost much of her work a couple months earlier in a more than suspicious burglary, and so the exhibition was a meditation on mourning, the processes of receiving and releasing the […]
Africans can draw uninformed conclusions about what’s going on in their own backyards and on the continent.
The author, a regular contributor, summarizes four new books she's been reading.
This week, the World Bank issued a report, South Africa Economic Update: Inequality of Opportunity. The report accurately and unsurprisingly details the depth of inequality in the new South Africa. For some, this report, and even more inequality itself, proves that “the spirit of Verwoerd still haunts” the nation. For others, the report details a […]
Kunene’s compositions don’t necessarily have a benchmark to conform to, but instead reveal the continuous state of transcendence his music takes.
Shameless self-promotion: “Board Games” is a short documentary video I did for my friend Kent Lingeveldt who runs the independent Alpha Longboards company. I just showed up at his workshop when he told me to, followed him where he told me to, and drank coffee when he told me to. The video is “a day […]
Nat Nakasa was an ambitious journalist who had the cold fortune of being born black in 20th century South Africa.
Antoinette Engel, a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Cape Town (and a friend of this blog) took these images of bathers at Sea Point last year. We found them on the 75 photography website and asked to see the rest of the series.
White Euro-Americans are drawn to Sub Saharan Africa by an urge to explore, do good or by a more existential desire for an encounter with radical difference.
Can North Africans define their own futures, away from the inventions of old white men in think tanks in Washington DC?
'Dear Mandela' questions whether the history of South Africa's ruling party obscures its corruption and immoralities. And what kinds of movements it would take to challenge the ANC's power head on.
The London Festival of Photography has opened, and one of its most appealing features is an exhibition of images by Steve Bloom – Beneath the Surface – a unique document of South African life in the 1970s. There are images of squatters camps, protests (and police violence) in Cape Town, the demolition of buildings in […]
I am writing this from Cape Town, South Africa, where it took a while to load the 53 second Youtube video of the latest Nando’s ad (embedded at the end of this paragraph), so I am not sure how “it is going viral” as the local press would suggest. Though viral here also means about 300,000 […]
Denzel Washington's new thriller, "Safe House," plays out in Cape Town, South Africa. You mostly can't tell. That's deliberate.
Pieter Hugo, the critically acclaimed South African photographer, has done an interview with Guernica (H/T Glenna Gordon) in which he seems to be taking issue with criticisms of his work, especially the “Nollywood” series: “It’s quite scary when academics start dictating to artists that they should be politically correct or follow certain rules of behavior — which means […]