© Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo from the series 'Slaghuis'
John, the foundation of your discussion today is based on your experience as an educator and curator in photography, firstly as director for 14 years of Market Photo Workshop, a school, project space and gallery based in Johannesburg founded by David Goldblatt in 1989, and then as the director of Photo: a multi-operation platform working with emerging photographers and enhancing the network across institutions in Africa. We often argue about the fact that in response to many technological changes impacting the role and nature of photography, learning has become an ongoing and lifelong experience. If so, what are the critical decisions when developing learning and public programs? And what kind of photography is most appropriate and necessary today?
I think it's quite critical to start to think about photography not just as an act of a photographer but perhaps as a communication interlinking the photographer to our larger communities; our society. In the context of this conference, I think it's important to distinguish between formal education, a repeatable curriculum that is structured and accredited by education regulators, from informal education that occurs rather more in a deregulated form. Non-formal education takes place in between these formal/informal spaces for education, having some structure but allowing for the dynamic of change. Having quickly said this on the possible existing education scenario, the question for institutions that are teaching photography is really: how long does it take to become a photographer? Or an artist? I think this is the first question that we have to consider when we start to think about photography institutions in South Africa. Can we say that is two years or three years? Or is it a lifelong process? I think we need to understand photography as ongoing learning. At best what photographers gather at their time in the academy is getting introduced to the tool and contexts, while probably it is only in time that they can better focus on what exactly they need to develop their career. I believe is crucial to stop and think about the importance of building a community to reflect on and upon their engagement. We need to create space for that...
© Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo from the series 'Slaghuis'
© Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo from the series 'Slaghuis'
© Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo from the series 'Slaghuis'
So what does it mean to create a community of photographers for you?
It is the essential element of thinking around photography education. I am thinking about art practice but also about the larger conversation about what it is that photography does. How then can we consider the idea of "ethos" in spaces of education? Is it not easier to speak about the spirit of the culture of a community that is manifested from attitudes and aspirations? Have formal education institutions become expressions of power that respond to authorities and regulations by government policies that feed on privileges? Those are some of the questions that I pose myself. Central to the idea of teaching photography in South Africa was to speak of the history of representations and the ethos of education. What is the role of photography in an unjust society? And how can photography address and redress these conditions? In the context of South Africa recruitment of photographers from excluded communities can be one way. These photographers bring work from their community that otherwise would not have been seen. Or that otherwise would have been photographed by outsiders. The question of representation is complex. Recruitment is not only around the students but is also about the exclusion of who is teaching, speaking. How can we break the insularity of photography to include other knowledge producers? Often gatherings of photography are just for photographers. How do we address for instance issues of environmental, social concerns, when we are not in the community. Decolonial initiatives recently found different ways to rethink the role and practices of photography in Africa, as elsewhere new generations of photographers have become by the nature of their work, historians, sociologists, and have used the practice of their work as a chance to reposition these knowledge-fields.
© Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo from the series 'Slaghuis'
Cover of the catalog Blurring the Lines 2020 published by Urbanautica Institute, featuring work by Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo
How then do we include knowledge experts in our education as part of our community? Is there still room for vertical learning?
Vertical learning of course has a space, set in the conditions of institutions that understand sharing and mentoring. I am speaking about mentorships as a critical part of learning. It's not just about getting the right information from somebody that has gone through the process before. It's to direct and personalize a process of learning of how to conduct ourselves. It's about setting up relationships with somebody that you know has the experience and also takes you seriously. I think sometimes we underestimate the inclusion of established and experienced photographers in our courses. Horizontal experiences between peers, colleagues, people who can share daily similarities, challenges and how to overcome them are equally important. People who can share knowledge, equipment, skills, information. It's only by being within certain communities that you can share and engage. It's only then that most importantly we learn how to self-position, and understand our own privilege that comes with it. It's in the community that our knowledge about race, gender, sexuality, the environment can be questioned and tested. We cannot learn to be an artist without empathy, knowledge, engagement.
Speaking of education, how would you summarize the situation in the African continent?
Let me speak of Photo: the organization that I am working with and that I am heading up. One of the first things that we have done was to do a survey on Photography Education Initiatives on the African Continent. What we have seen is that many of these institutions do not exist within a space but often as institutions of personalities, of individuals who drive and make things that otherwise would not be possible. They are all over the continent. In 2015 we did a research of about 140 institutions that we found through the internet and our previous knowledge of the continent. We shortlisted about 40 institutions to look at their curriculum, premises, kind of students they recruit, lecturers, trainers, people teaching. And from there we set up very basic information of about 15 of these institutions. In 2016 we started to develop an organization "Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa (CLPA)" that is still running today and I believe it's a great initiative. Something very similar perhaps to ‘Blurring the Lines’ in the way that it shares information about photographic educational activities running across the continent. It's a network of independent education initiatives across Africa. These institutions are based in different countries. Photo: is of course part of the network and it's based in Johannesburg as previously mentioned. Market Photo Workshop is also a well-known centre for photography. The Nlele Institute in Lagos, Nigeria, is a photography platform for learning. Similar to the latest is Associação AOJE, in Mindelo, Capo Verde with a very well know a programme called "Catchupa Factory". There is Contemporary Image Collective, in Cairo, which got an incredible history of developing visual culture and public debates. And there are other organizations such as Kwanda Art, in Kigali, Rwanda, recently leading the Kigali Photo Fest. There are organizations that offer infrastructure like Espace Photo Partage- DJAW (EPP) which is basically a premises where photographers can come and learn from each other.
© Map indicating CLPA members
How do you keep up contacts and initiatives at CLPA?
Within this group of people, we communicate through monthly WhatsApp meetings, but we have also started what I believe is our most important mechanism for discussion: the CLPA News. It's a newsletter that we bring out every so often. In the past it was three times per year, unfortunately in 2020 due to the Covid-19 it was only once. For every edition, we invite different contributors and a guest editor, such as Jacques Nkinzingabo from Rwanda in the case of our last issue. What we do is gather information, interviews, visual materials regarding a critical topic. So, for instance, in our last issue, we looked at how Covid-19 is influencing and impacting the future of photography. We looked also at the future of education and we then asked all the people to submit some feedback that we put together. So the newsletter becomes a space where we exchange ideas and start thinking about how to share practices among institutions, such as tips for online educators. One of the really important aspects everywhere around the world is this idea of how we are emotionally affected by the conditions of Covid and distance learning particularly in African countries where internet access is not equally distributed and efficient. Is internet access then a human right? The newsletter has also a little bit of gathering on what the learning activities are within the different institutions.
In the newsletter there's a great photograph by Mauro Vombe could you tell us more, which of course was taken before Covid-19?
Well, we thought it was kind of useful to introduce this photograph to show the density and intensity of how we gather before the Covid-19 step into our lives. Each of the newsletters actually deals with different kinds of subjects and ways of thinking around photography. In 2019 we had a feature on gender binaries in African photography. We looked at how these gender binaries express in photographs, exhibitions often in very difficult spaces across the continents. I love for instance the photograph of Joëlle Lubeme from the Democratic Republic of Congo which shows exactly some of the concern of the continent on who is sitting in front of the computer and learning and who are taking photographs of who. I think this is an interesting way to see how the industry is still very much affected by sexism.
© Cover of CLPA News, The Covid-19 Issue
© CLPA News, Issue 2019 #1, Picture by Joëlle Lubeme
What about the 10:Queer project? And can you briefly introduce us to the project "democra-SEE" in Maputo?
10:Queer is a project coordinated by Photo: in 2018 that played with the idea of how do we get people together relating to the question of knowledge production, if only photographers come together. So what we have done was to invite 5 experts (anthropologists, sociologists, and artists) to work with image-makers in a 2-week program where they gather around to do a project. And the very important aspect was that people were able to share critical information in group sessions but also be part of this very intimate exchange of 10 people. I think that this idea of having a small interactive program with people of different fields of knowledge is becoming very critical for our future.
© A meeting during 10:Queer
Finally "democraSEE" is about the idea of getting people to produce new works so that they are able to see their works perhaps in public. It's also about starting to see invisibilities, and so part of the curriculum has to do with complicit notions of representations, with social rejection and erasure of people from communities
We run different masterclasses with staged exhibitions in different places, situations, communities. Like in Mindelo we used a basic installation system of posters on the floor as people would walk by and engage with photography while at the same time photographer would interact with a broader public. Likewise in Ethiopia, although regulations can be tougher there, it was an important moment to start to interrupt the idea of the public image with social media. And of course, is often about low technologies installations that however are beneficial for having people working together.
© Installation view of the project 'democraSEE', Mindelo, Cabo Verde
© Installation view of the project 'democraSEE', Ethiopia
The images by Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo are from the series 'Slaghuis' a search for what it means to be marked by violence. ‘Slaghuis’ is an Afrikaans word for a literal place of slaughter and a vernacular expression for a place of violence that had come to identify the tavern where Hlatshwayo grew up. He transforms the familiar spaces of home and tavern into places of making that take up violence as a visual language; home and tavern into a studio.
share this page