black and white photograph on Baryta paper

Artwork date: 1988
Signature details: dated, numbered 3/5 and inscribed with the artist's name, the title and medium on a Gallery MOMO label on the reverse
Exhibited: Examples from the edition were exhibited in:
Kunsthaus Göttingen, Göttingen, 'Santu Mofokeng: Stories', 19 February to 1 May 2022.
FOAM, Amsterdam, 'Santu Mofokeng: Stories', 15 February to 28 April 2019.
Modena Foro Boario, Italy, 'Santu Mofokeng. A Silent Solitude', 6 March to 8 May 2016.
Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 'Chasing Shadows. Santu Mofokeng, Thirty Years of Photographic Essays', 7 October to 27 November 2011.
Jeu de Paume, Paris, 'Chasing Shadows. Santu Mofokeng, Thirty Years of Photographic Essays', 24 May 2011 to 25 September 2011.
Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerpen, 'Chasing Shadows. Santu Mofokeng, Thirty Years of Photographic Essays', 4 May to 29 July 2012.
Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 'Chasing Shadows. Santu Mofokeng, Thirty Years of Photographic Essays', 13 January to 26 February 2012.
Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg, 'Santu Mofokeng', 22 September to 18 October 2004.
Market Galleries, Johannesburg, 'Rumours / The Bloemhof Portfolio', 1994.
Literature: Diserins, C. (ed). (2011). 'Chasing Shadows: Santu Mafokeng, Thirty Years of Photographic Essays'. Munich: Prestel Verlag, an example from the edition illustrated on p.49.
Mofokeng, S. (2016), 'Santu Mofokeng: Stories: 2: Concert in Sewefontein', Göttingen: Steidl.

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image size: 100 x 150 cm; framed size: 110.5 x 160.5 x 6.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

This image features in Santu Mofokeng’s critically acclaimed Rumours: The Bloemhof Portfolio. Produced between 1988 to 1994, this series of ‘photo stories’ reveal the photographer’s humanist approach to documenting South African communities during that period.

In 1988, Mofokeng joined the staff of the African Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand as a documentary photographer and researcher. In this position, he began to record the lives of tenant labourers in the township of Bloemhof, an agricultural town in the North West Province. Over the next several years, Mofokeng amassed what could be considered the core of his body of work.

In contrast to the typical images of violence and poverty from apartheid South Africa that proliferated in global media in the 1980s, Mofokong instead, sensitively portrays people at leisure in their homes, dancing in shebeen bars, or playing games in the street.

These nuanced, slowed-down images, like Concert at Sewefontein, Bloemhof, resist the sensational and provide an intimate vision of people. Here he renders ordinary lives with exceptional attention to the context of land and home.

Highly distilled, yet immersive, the hazy black-and-white images are poetically surreal, haunting and spiritual.

COLLECTOR’S NOTE

An example of the edition forms part of the SABC Art Collection, Johannesburg.

Santo Mofokeng’s photographs currently feature in Beyond the Binary: Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt at The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Everybody Talks About the Weather at Fondazione Prada in Venice, A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, London and in choreographies of the impossible for the 35th Bienal de São Paulo in São Paulo.

A freelance photojournalist and member of the Afrapix Collective in the 1980s, Mofokeng won the Ernest Cole Scholarship to study at the International Centre of Photography in New York in 1991.

Mentored by David Goldblatt during the 1980s and 1990s, Mofokeng’s photographs formed part of major exhibitions at various international institutions including Appropriated Landscapes at the The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm in 2011 and The Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life at the International Center of Photography, New York in 2012. His first retrospective, Chasing Shadows: Thirty Years of Photographic Essays, opened in 2011 at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, and travelled to Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, and South Africa.

Mofokeng represented Germany at the 2013 Venice Biennale and was the inaugural recipient of the Biennial Honour, established by Fondazione Fotografia Modena and Sky Arte HD to recognise a living photographer of any nationality, whose artistic research has made a significant contribution. Coinciding with the award, the Fondazione Fotografia Modena presented his solo exhibition Santu Mofokeng. A Silent Solitude, curated by Simon Njami at the Modena Foro Boario, Italy, in 2016.

Santu Mofokeng was honoured with an Honorary Doctorate from Wits University in 2016.

COLLECTIONS

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Tate Modern, London.; Iziko South African Nation Art Gallery, Cape Town.; The Walther Collection, New York.; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris.; Museum of Modern Art, New York and MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany.