Stories
Published on 24. September 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
1046 pages
978-3-95829-515-5 (ISBN)
Description
Santu Mofokeng began to dedicate himself to portraying everyday experience in South African townships in 1985, first as a member of the Afrapix collective, and then as a documentary photographer for the African Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. This set of publications, which continues a groundbreaking reappraisal of the photographer's archive, presents aspects of life in Soweto, where Mofokeng grew up; Dukathole, a township in the East Rand of Gauteng Province; and Johannesburg, the city in which he worked. Taken together, they invite a nuanced understanding of largely unsung narratives from a crucial period in South African history which saw the demise of apartheid.
Limited edition of 1,000 boxed sets
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Santu Mofokeng was born in Johannesburg in 1956. After working as a darkroom assistant for various newspapers, he joined Afrapix, a collective of photographers dedicated to the struggle against apartheid. His interest in depicting ordinary township life, however, led him to work for the African Studies Institute at Wits University from 1988 until 1998. Over the past three decades, Mofokeng has created an incomparable, open-ended body of work that probes the meaning and authority of photographic images while subverting stereotypical notions of the black South African experience. In 2011 a retrospective of Mofokeng's work opened at the Jeu de Paume before traveling internationally, and in 2013 he represented Germany in the Venice Biennale.
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