We’ve said it before, but South Africa is really undergoing a photographic renaissance. And now, canon-defining institutions are taking notice. Currently on view at the V&A in London, Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography presents the work of seventeen photographers currently working in the Rainbow Nation. It features heavy-hitters like David Goldblatt and Pieter Hugo, and some of our favorites, Mikhael Subotzky, but the lesser-known image makers are the real draw. They cover the stylistic spectrum; Sabelo Mlangeni’s Men Only series is a darkly moving portrait of the the taxi drivers and security guards who live in Johannesburg’s George Goch hostel, while Nonisekelo Veleko turns a sharp sociological eye to street fashion with Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.
One of the most arresting facets of the work in Figures & Fictions is the range of pictorial vocabularies employed to capture the interconnected currents of race, sex, class, and violence that define everyday life in South Africa. These photographers are well-versed in the current trends of both documentary and conceptual photography, but their subject is a social landscape still defined by the legacy of Apartheid and colonialism. The results seem astonishing; a conceptual ethnography of a fraught and changing culture well-deserving of this survey. There will undoubtedly be many more to come.
Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Open until July 17th, 2011
Photography, top, by Sabelo Mlangeni from his Country Girls series and, bottom, by Nonisekelo Veleko from his Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder series
