Standard Bank Gallery launches an initiative to help understand photography better
One of the artists that are part of the initiative is Soweto, Dube’s very own, Andrew Tshabangu whose lens finds its focal point in people on city streets.
The Standard Bank Gallery launches a virtual exhibition, ‘Photographs in Our Mother Tongue’, which is its first exhibition for 2021, and due to the global pandemic, the gallery is currently closed however, the exhibition can be accessed virtually.
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.
Photographs in Our Mother Tongue include images from the company’s Corporate Art Collection produced by major South African artists working in the photographic medium between 2003 and 2017. One of the artists being Soweto, Dube’s very own, Andrew Tshabangu whose lens finds its focal point in people on city streets. Tshabangu is known for his black and white photographic work which was shown in a largescale retrospective entitled Footprints at the Standard Bank Gallery 4 years ago and which was accompanied by a book publication.
And just for a teaser of other interesting photographs, 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. And Santu Mofokeng and Marcus Neustetter, playing with light and dark, render the familiar into the eerily unfamiliar.
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. The iconic images of the preceding decades were mostly associated with photographers working in an urgent documentary and journalistic context – recording life under apartheid and the early years of democracy. The works collected in Photographs in Our Mother Tongue are evidence of a shift towards a more reflective and experimental approach. This change notably overlapped with developments in photographic technology (from analog to digital) and an altering media landscape (the increasing role of smartphones and social media in the circulation of imagery).
“The company shares the Corporate Art Collection with the public so they can experience the different perspectives of life through photography”, says Dr Same Mdluli, Standard Bank Gallery Manager and Curator, adding that 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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