Until September 25th, 2011, the Jeu de Paume presents through a choice of more than 200 photographs and slide shows, 30 years of photo essays by Santu Mofokeng. A kind of retrospective shown for the first time in Europe and which, following Paris, will be featured in the Anvers’ Extra City Kunsthall, in Bern’s Kunsthalle and at the Bergen Kunsthall.

Born in 1956, Santu Mofokeng lives in Johannesburg and has been taking photos since his childhood. Starting off as a “street photographer” in the 1970’s, Santu Mofokeng began taking portraits of his family and his friends in Soweto. In 1981 he was hired by the newspaper Beeld as an assistant in the photo laboratory before beginning to work the following year for the magazine of the Chambre de Mines. In 1985 he joined Afrapix, a photographer’s collective founded in 1982, aiming to supply documentary photographs for the anti-apartheid struggle. His work, focusing on current affairs, began to be published in Weekly (today Mail & Guardian).

“It was ideal for me to work in this newspaper, as I was never able to keep deadlines, and I don’t drive. When we were on a reportage, once the subject was finished, those who had a car would rush to the lab and present their works. I couldn’t. In all, it would clearly illustrate my way of working. I would take a week to make a reportage and I would not comply with the deadline which was for the next day (…) I thus began to think in terms of books instead of those of newspapers (…) The slowness became my force.”

Corinne Diserens, curator of the exhibition, has chosen for this retrospective photographs among the essays that the photographer has made since his beginnings in Soweto until the latest images that are still in process. The title of this retrospective, “chasing shadows” was defined by Mofokeng himself.

“The term of shadow does not carry the same image nor the same meaning as in ‘seriti’ or ‘is’thunzi’. In sotho as in zulu, this word cannot be summed up in just one sense. In the everyday language, ‘seriti’ or ‘is’thunzi’ covers many meanings such as aura, presence, dignity, confidence, power, but also spirit, essence, prestige or well-being. In vernacular language, these words also recall the experience of that who is loved or feared.” (Santu Mofokeng)

The essays of Mofokeng show successively the Soweto of his youth, his studies on everyday life in the farms and in the “townships”, especially those on the representations around himself and stories from the black families from South Africa, more recent images following his research on the religious rituals, and finally landscapes, among them the Radiant Landscapes project, specially produced for this exhibition.

We will find eight photographs from the essay Train Church (1986) on the church-trains that he considers his first “achieved photographic essay”.

We will also find nine photographs from the series Appropriated Spaces, that began in 1985. Sixteen photographs from the Rumours/The Bloemhof Portfolio essays (1988-1994) made within the frame of his missions as a researcher and photographer at the African Studies Institute (ASI).

Chasing Shadows is composed of twenty three photographs taken from this essay that he began in 1996. On Good Friday in 1996, Santu Mofokeng set out for the Motoleng grotto to photograph the rituals performed by the members of the “Zionist Apostolic Faith.”

Nine photographs taken from the Township Billboards: Beauty, Sex et Cellphoness series (1991-2006), an enquiry on the iconographic history of the billboards since the apparition of the “townships”.

Six photographs from the essay Child-headed housebolds (2007). Twenty five photographs from the essay Soweto Townships (1982-1989) presented compared with the 80 slides from the essay The Black Photo Album / Look 1890-1950 (1997). The Black Photo Album looks like old found or purchased photographs, portraits, family photographs… rephotographed by Mofoberg who also has done actual research work to find the people portrayed in these photographs.

Twenty six photographs taken from the essay Trauma Landscapes and Landscapes and Memory began in 1996, in which “the landscape becomes a silent witness of stories and adventures”. Through shooting places that bear a story and a memory, the photographer questions the proper idea of landscape.

“(…) the appreciation of a landscape is shaped by the personal experience, the myth and the memory, among other things. Needless to say that it is nourished also from ideology, propaganda, projections and prejudices.”

The last essay Radiant Landscapes was started in 2011 and specially conceived for this exhibition. He continues to be interested in the “invisible sicknesses” such as Apartheid and Aids. As described by Patricia Hayes in the essay that accompanies this commission, “he has photographed the relationship of people with the spiritual worlds, or even with the spirits. These are seen as “real” for many South Africans. As well as diseases such as asbestos or Mesothelioma.”

A monograph is included in the exhibition Chasing Shadows Santu Mofokeng – Thirty years of photographic essays. Text by Okui Enzewor, Patricia Hayes, Sarat Maharaj, Santu Mofokeng, Njabulo S. Ndbele, Ivan Vladislavic, Sabine Vogel, interview by Corinne Diserens and the artist.

Hard cover, 24 × 28 cm, 240 pages, 200 illustrations
Co edition Prestel / Jeu de Paume Publishing.
Catalog published with the sponsoring of the Institut français and the Amis du Jeu de Paume.

Meeting with them photograph and the curator on May 24 2011, 7:00pm

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Santu Mofokeng “Chasseurs d’ombres, Thirty years of photographic essays
May 24– September 25, 2011

Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde
75008 Paris