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National Team: Trevor Noah (left), is the captain of the SA National
Team of Comedy, Eugene Khoza (centre) the vice captain and Ntosh
Madlingozi the coach. Photo: Supplied

Gig Guide: Savanna presents Festival of Comedy, Dominica releases Your Presence and Santu Mofokeng at the Standard Bank Art Lab

Your essential dose of art and culture

History: A work by Ruth Motau on at the analogue photography exhibition In Black and White at the University of Johannesburg.

Looking back in black and white to see more clearly

A nostalgic journey through analogue photography that bridges generations and memories

Generational wealth: An archive of 60 000 negatives in a Swedish bank was published posthumously by the
Ernest Cole Family Trust through Aperture in the book The True America in 2023. Photo: Ernest Cole

A legacy in focus: The long shadow of Ernest Cole

Ernest Cole’s lens captured apartheid’s truth and his legacy continues to shape creatives today

Watching and learning: Peter Magubane with a BaNtwane elder at a rites of passage ceremony near Groblersdaal in 2008. Photo: Dave Meyer-Gollan

Black Photo Libraries: Peter Magubane on the struggle for documentation

Peter Magubane, whose images set him on a collision course with the apartheid government, pays tribute to his colleagues in this foreword to a new book

Mme MaMotaung at Chicken farm informal settlement in 1985. (Santu Mofokeng Foundation)
Video

An ‘aesthetic inheritance’: ugogo the [visual] griot

Refiguring ugogo as a critical figure in the making of Black [visual] archives

Hasan and Husain Essop’s Facing Giblah, 2010, inhabits the mode of self-portraiture, accounting for several photographs in this Standard Bank Gallery exhibition.

‘Photographs In Our Mother Tongue’: The new South Africa under scrutiny

A retrospective of photographic works at the Standard Bank Gallery offers a snapshot in time

Artist and photographer Thembi Mthembu pictured at the Gulf of Venice in 2019. (Thembi Mthembu)

Talking Bodies: Photographers use self-portraits to tell stories

Mandisa Buthelezi and Thembi Mthembu are adding depth to the photographic archive through their self-portraits with captions and historical reframing

We Wanted a Revolution – Black Radical Women, 1965-85 (Duke University Press)

The List: A peek at the Stevenson library

Stevenson gallery staff took to Instagram to share a small selection of literature guiding their “respective journeys towards listening, learning and confronting bias”

Stolen land: ‘Ranch or homestead?’ A farm house in Commondale. (Santu Mofokeng)

Taking the battle to the grave: South Africa’s contested sites

In his swansong, Santu Mofokeng ruminates on mortality, ancestry and dispossession

Memories: In his series Train Church, photographed over a few weeks in 1986 on a commuter line between Soweto and Johannesburg, Santu Mofokeng lays bare the conditions of black people on the move

See our history in buildings

The built environment is an important part of art and often lurks in the background

Thing of beauty: The black photo album

A deep look into history through stark studio portraits of South Africans.

Chasing Shadows: Shebeen. (Copyright Santu Mofokeng Foundation, courtesy Lunetta Bartz MAKER )

Out of the shadows

A comprehensive retrospective of Santu Mofokeng’s work deserves a better showing at the Wits Art Museum.

The black albums

In an edited extract from his essay in <i>Granta’s The View from Africa</i>, photographer Santu Mofokeng recalls his first moments behind the lens.