Standard Bank Gallery presents Photographs in Our Mother Tongue

The Standard Bank Gallery’s first exhibition for 2021 Photographs in Our Mother Tongue includes images from the Standard Bank Corporate Art Collection produced by major South African artists working in the photographic medium between 2003 and 2017.

These years of transition in South African society were also a period during which photography became a more prominent feature of the country’s visual arts scene.

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Dr Same Mdluli, Standard Bank Gallery Manager and Curator said the title of the exhibition was inspired by the ability of photography as a medium to communicate strong and compelling messages. It invites viewers to reimagine photography and its power to capture themes and images that are quintessentially South African – as if these photographs are communicating to us in a language we understand, in our mother tongue.

Mdluli explained that in a number of the works exhibited in Photographs in Our Mother Tongue – by Mohau Modisakeng, Mary Sibande, Hasan and Husain Essop, Kathryn Smith, and Candice Breitz – the artists use themselves as subjects or recreate versions of themselves.

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These are not, however, simply self-portraits; the photographer-subject adopts a persona, plays a part, prompting the viewer to question our assumption that photographs capture ‘real life’ moments.

She added, “Standard Bank shares the Corporate Art Collection with the public so they can experience the different perspectives of life through photography. The reality is that the artists capture and portray the images in their own imagination while interpreting life differently through the lens.”

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Mdluli said Andrew Tshabangu’s lens finds its focal point in people on city streets. Jo Ractliffe, like Tshabangu, depicts downtown Johannesburg – but she looks up the architecture, combining different perspectives on the urban jungle. Bridget Baker’s triptych also collapses multiple views or scenes into one work.

Mdluli concluded by stating that all of these photographers challenge the viewer to ‘look’ differently, to ‘see’ more than first appears to us in the image. Photography, here, is shown to be both an archive of the world we know and a tool for reshaping it, revisioning it, into something new.

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