archival ink print on Hahnemühle Baryta 300gsm

Artwork date: 2020
Signature details: signed on the reverse
Edition: number 1 from an edition of 5

(1)

image size: 33 x 50cm; sheet size: 42 x 59.5 cm unframed

Full title: A young lady rolls her eyes as she gets teased by a patrolling army officer. Lock down level 5, Alexandra, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2020

Marc Shoul lives and works in Johannesburg. He works largely in portraiture and documentary photography that observes complex social issues. Shoul graduated from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University with a BTech in Photography in 1999.

He has had solo exhibitions at The South African Jewish Museum, Cape Town (2018); Musée Pierre Noël, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France (2017); Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, USA (2015); Extraspaszio Gallery, Rome, Italy (2013); Pretoria Art Museum (2012); Quai 1, Vevey, Switzerland (2010); and Atelier de Visu, Marseille, France (2013), where he also completed an artist’s residency. Shoul’s work has been featured at the screenings of Visa Pour L’Image, Perpignan, France and the Ankor Photographic Festival, Siem Reap, Cambodia. His series Landsman featured at Addis Foto Fest 2018, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Shoul won the WinePhoto photographic competition with Brakpan and received an honourable mention for Flatlands in 2011.

His work is included in the collections of the Iziko South African National Gallery, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Museum, as well as The Memmo Foundation in Rome, Italy. He is represented by Panos Pictures in London, UK.

“Anxiety and fear increased as a national state of disaster was announced in March 2020. Pressed into a morbid game of hide and seek we isolate. Soon after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the procedures for a 21-day lockdown, the South African National Defence Force was deployed to enforce the new reality and rules. Socially distanced shopping queues snake out into mall parking lots. Trollies overflow with supplies. The banning of liquor and cigarettes sales opened up a massive black market to fill the demand. We stood masked, sanitised, confused and silent. Our hospital systems sat uneasily knowing that it was just a matter of time before the tsunami would hit. South Africa, already in a recession and freshly demoted to ‘junk status’ when the virus arrived, was told to stay home. For many this meant no income, no future.

[…] For many, the walls started closing in and hunger overcame Covid as the most pressing concern. In-between family duties I would traverse the city, and have found, and share, many stories of heartbreak and many visions of a nation at war, not only with a pandemic but also with itself. I needed to shoot life in this time of change. I looked at the dramas and the dramas spoke to me through the images they offered up. Does that mean that all the images are pictures of despair? Indeed, there is plenty of that. But the South African street remains a place of resilience and survival. It has always been that way, and I hope to show that ordinary life goes on, and will flourish, despite this global setback.”

Time Between was selected for the Corona Call group exhibition, in association with Sana Sanaa, Fahrbereitschaft Haubrok, Berlin, 2020