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Artists presented by
John Fleetwood

SAMMY BALOJI

Baloji’s photography deals with the exploitation of people, land and landscape. His work Kolwezi is a simple portrait of a global economy, yet at the same time, reveals the intensity and complexity of the consequences through the layers of narrative. He uses wide-ranging modes to progress this narrative that construct and disassemble relationships between people and space and the photographer.


HASAN AND HUSAIN ESSOP

Hasan and Husain Essop question the implications of Western imagery depicting Muslim identity. In response they have developed a playful but serious reply that uses self-representation and stereotypes. The twins’ exploration poses religion within a consumerist society in a way that queries photography’s limitations to be unobtrusive.


ZANELE MUHOLI

Muholi uses photography to record and advocate gay, lesbian and queer identities in a transitional South African context. She has created a portrait inventory of the multiplicity of identities, an inventory that disclaims ignorance and defies an existing narrow representation of ‘other’. Muholi’s activism is backdropped by violence against queer communities, in particular black lesbians. There is a strong aspect of self-representation that commits her to this expression and community.

John Fleetwood.

Courtesy of Mack Magagane.


John Fleetwood

Born in 1970 in Johannesburg.

Lives and works in Johannesburg.


John Fleetwood is the Head of the Market Photo Workshop, a school and gallery for photography. The Photo Workshop, founded by David Goldblatt in 1989, runs courses and multi-layered development programs that respond to the complex conditions of South African education, culture, and identity. Fleetwood guides both the educational and artistic frameworks of the place. During his ten year tenure at the Photo Workshop, he initiated The Photo Workshop gallery, one of few photography dedicated galleries in South Africa; the Photojournalism Documentary Photography Programme, the sole photojournalism training programme of this nature on the African continent; as well as various mentorship programmes for developing photographers, including the Edward Ruiz Mentorship, the longest established photography mentorship on the continent. John Fleetwood’s interests are predominantly in the developing mode of documentary photography and the possibilities for photography in the aesthetics of advocacy. He is interested in how the ordinary is transformed by specific conditions and determined by the intricacies of context.