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.