The Market Photo Workshop in partnership with The Tierney Family Foundation is excited to announce Tshepiso Mazibuko as the 10th recipient of the Tierney Fellowship at the Market Photo Workshop. The Tierney Fellowship enables an ideal platform for an emerging photographer to successfully conceptualize, develop and produce a body of work. The Fellowship provides the successful applicant with the financial support necessary to research and produce a body of photography work in consultation with an appointed mentor of the recipient’s preference, over a period of a year.

The selection of the 10th Tierney Fellow adhered to a thorough selection process with an expert panel of judges comprising of Matthew Tierney, Lekgetho Makola, Musa Nxumalo, Jerry Vezzuso, and Candice Jansen.

John Fleetwood, a renowned South African photography curator and facilitator, will mentor Mazibuko during the Fellowship.

About Tshepiso Mazibuko

Tshepiso Mazibuko was born in Thokoza, South Africa in 1995. Mazibuko uses the medium of photography to add commentary on politics, society, landscape and history. Mazibuko completed her studies in photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 2016. She has exhibited her work at Ithuba Art Gallery in Johannesburg, The Ghent Photo Festival in Belgium, The Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Warren Editions in Cape Town, the Art Africa Fair in Cape Town, as well as the Addis Foto Fest in Ethiopia. She lives and works in Thokoza.

About the mentor, John Fleetwood

John Fleetwood is the director of Photo: a platform that develops, curates and produces photography and photography education projects, working especially with photographers from the African continent and South Africa. From 2002-2015 Fleetwood directed the Market Photo Workshop.

Fleetwood curated Cities and Memory as part of the Photo Biennale in Denmark (2016), he co-curated Against Time, The Tierney Fellowship in South Africa for the 10th Edition of the Bamako Encounters (2015), and A Return to Elsewhere, a collaborative photography project between Kalpesh Lathigra (UK) and Thabiso Sekgala (SA) for the Brighton Photo Biennale, Joburg Photo Umbrella (2014).

About The Tierney Fellowship

The Tierney Fellowship was created in 2003 by The Tierney Family Foundation to support emerging artists in the field of photography. The primary goal of the Fellowship is to find tomorrow’s distinguished artists and leaders in the world of photography and assist them in overcoming the challenges that a photographer faces at the beginning of his or her career.

The aim of the fellowship is twofold: encouraging fellows to produce a new body of work
and creating a global community of artists that functions as a crucial support network in an increasingly competitive field. The Fellowship supports the recipients both financially, by way of a grant, and technically and conceptually, with mentorship and guidance from experts in the field.

Fellows remain an important part of the programme after the conclusion of their structured mentorship. Seminars and critiques are held throughout the year to facilitate interaction between all current and past recipients, encouraging discussion about their photography, work experience and lives as artists.

Initially, in 2003, Tierney fellows were selected from prestigious United States east coast art schools, such as Bard College, Yale University School of Arts, the International Centre of Photography, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Parsons the New School for Design and School of Visual Arts. This was then rolled out to include prominent art schools and universities in South Africa, Mexico, China and India. The Tierney Fellowship programme ran for the first time in South Africa in 2008. In South Africa, partner institutions include the Market Photo Workshop, WITS School of Arts and The Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. From 2014 only the South African fellowships have continued to be funded by the Tierney Family Foundation.

The Tierney Fellows are mentored internally (from within the host institutions); Market Photo has previously appointed mentors such as Pieter Hugo, Mikhael Subotzky, David Goldbaltt, Jo Ractliffe, Nontobeko Ntombela, Mary Sibande, Graeme Williams and Cedric Nunn.

Previous Market Photo Workshop Fellows include:
2008 – Tracey Edser
2009 – Simangele Kalisa
2010 – Thabiso Sekgala
2011 – Mack Magagane
2012 – Lebohang Kganye
2013 – Sipho Gongxeka
2014 – Matt Kay
2015 – Tsepo Gumbi
2016 – Celimpilo Mazibuko

See http://www.tierneyfellowship.org/ for more information.

About the Market Photo Workshop

For over twenty-seven years, the Market Photo Workshop has played a pivotal role in the training of South Africa’s photographers, ensuring that visual literacy reaches neglected and marginalized parts of our society. World- renowned photographer, David Goldblatt contributed vastly to the establishment of Market Photo Workshop in 1988 – 1989. Since then, the Photo Workshop has been an agent of change and representation, informing photographers, visual artists, educators, students and broader communities of trends, issues, and debates in photography and visual culture.

The Market Photo Workshop also runs a number of Public Programmes, which are a series of events involving and directed at professional photographers, visual artists, educators, students as well as the broader public. These Public Programmes seek to inform the trends, practices, methods, and contemporary ways of working and thinking in South African photography practice through exposure to a broad understanding of visual culture as well as a networking platform that encourages critical thinking and engagements.

Showcasing a number of high profile local and international photographers, as well as student and alumni photography work, the Market Photo Workshop has been able to build a strong and consistent audience base around our gallery, ‘The Photo Workshop Gallery’ in Newtown, which is on the same premises as the school. Since 2005, when the gallery was initially launched, the kind of platform it has engendered encourages not only emerging students to experience and enter into professional practice, but has distilled a new type of photographic practice amongst the greater artistic community. Various critical discourses, especially around the role documentary photography, have been stimulated by the multitude of exhibitions that have shown at The Photo Workshop Gallery creating dynamic interactions between students and the greater photography community. In 2017, Market Photo Workshop relocated to its new state of art photography facility at Market Square premises by the Mary Fitzgerald Square.

For more information, please contact:

Bekie Ntini
Coordinator: Mentorships and Training
T +27 (0) 11 834 1444
E-mail: bekien@marketphotoworkshop.co.za

Market Photo Workshop
138 Lilian Ngoyi Street
Newtown
Johannesburg
info@marketphotoworkshop.co.za
www.marketphotoworkshop.co.za

The Market Photo Workshop is a division of The Market Theatre Foundation.