This triennial festival will showcase a wide spectrum of South African
photographers, from conceptualist fine artists to photojournalists and
studio photographers. Curated by photographer and educationalist Jenny
Altschuler, the festival offers an outstanding selection of exhibitions,
workshops, walkabouts and ‘show-and-tell’ sessions celebrating a versatile
range of local talent.
The educational component offers established and upcoming
photographers, as well as the lay public, many opportunities to enhance
their skills. Prominent Cape Town art galleries, as well as Iziko Museums,
will host the exhibitions and workshops.
Joao Ferreira Gallery will present acclaimed award-winner, David
Lurie’s new body of work, Fragments from the edge, and Araminta de
Clermont’s Life After. The prestigious Michael Stevenson Gallery is
exhibiting top photographic artist, Berni Searle, as well as
Egyptian-Parisian, Joussef Nabil. The AVA Gallery in Church Street will
exhibit Ian Engelbrecht’s Seed of Memory on 6 October. This follows an
exhibition by five female photographers, The Leage of Anachronistic
Ahistoric Photographers Specialising in Archaic Processes, which ends on 3
October.
It is not often that international exhibitions are affordable to our
local cultural institutions, but the triennial this year has been granted
a bonus by the Roger Ballen Foundation which is bringing the American
Master of Photography, Stephen Shore, to Cape Town. A retrospective
exhibition of Shore’s work will opened on Heritage Day, 24 September, at
the Iziko South African National Gallery. Shore will also hold Master
classes during October.
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My Life, an exhibition of colourful representations of their home
environments by Grade 5 Greyton learners (the youngest participants), runs
at the SANG Annexe, and will serve as a reference point for a Schools
Photography Workshop Programme which opened earlier. This exhibition has
just returned from the renowned Heresford Photographic Festival in
England.
The Happy Mobile workshop, in which children are taught to create
mobiles, was conceptualized by Shani Judes of Word of Art, and partnered
by Cape Africa Platform and the Iziko Museums Education team. The mobiles
will be donated to children’s homes around the peninsula.
From 24 September until 24 November, at the Iziko South African
Museum, the work of photographers George Hallett, Santu Mofokeng, Sergio
Santimano, Ian van Coller and Tessa Gordon, Tracey Derrick, Jenny
Altschuler, Raquel de Castro Maia, Colin Stephenson, Garth Stead, Pieter
Bauermeister, Barry White, Nic Bothma and Madge Gibson will be on view.
At the Castle of Good Hope, Then and Now, probably the most
prestigious exhibition of the festival, compares images shot both before
and after South Africa’s transition to democracy .Well-known local
photographers, most of whom were active in the Afrapix agency during the
struggle will exhibit their work. These include Paul Weinberg, David
Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Cedric Nunn, Eric Miller, Giselle Wulfsohn, Graeme
Williams and George Hallett.
Also at the Castle is the exhibition, Construct, which extends the
documentary genre of Then and Now.
The Photographers Gallery ZA exhibits work by Dale Yudelman, Abrie
Fourie, Nomusa Makhubu, Roger Ballen and Lien Botha, with more
conceptualist themes.
A third exhibition at the Castle, on the theme of Emergence and
Emergency, which is the overall theme of MoP4, will showcase promising but
little-known young photographers. Among these are seven Gauteng
photographers.
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Cape
Town Month of Photography 2008