The Market Photo Workshop in association with the family of the late Gisèle Wulfsohn is pleased to announce Thembinkosi Reginald Hlatshwayo as the recipient of the 2019 Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography. The Mentorship provides an emerging photographer with the infrastructural support to develop an independent body of work over the course of a year. The mentorship has been created by the family and friends of the late Gisèle Wulfsohn to honour her memory and her work; and is seen as an opportunity to continue her approach and interests in photography. Wulfsohn dedicated her life and photography to awareness, openness and respect; she worked on issues of democracy, HIV/AIDS education and social inclusion, gender issues and women’s rights, and maintained a commitment to education and social change. The mentorship is aimed at developing emerging voices that are committed to fostering social inclusion.

The Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography builds on other Market Photo Workshop platforms geared towards a South Africa where photography plays an important part in the development of careers and the development of photography.

John Fleetwood, a renowned South African photography practitioner, will mentor Hlatshwayo. “Thembinkosi’s story has substance. It is a self-reflecting proposal that investigates how we position ourselves within a history,” said Fleetwood. “The Mentorship is a chance to test ideas, build vision and come into being.”

About Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo

Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo was born in Soweto in 1993. In 2018, Hlatshwayo successfully completed the yearlong Advanced Programme in Photography at Market Photo Workshop yearlong Advanced Programme in Photography. He is an alumnus of the Of Soul and Joy photography initiative, which he joined in 2016. Hlatshwayo has exhibited in-group exhibitions at the 2017 Photo Fest Thokoza and 2017 Art Africa Fair. In the same year, he was part of a Photo Folio Review in the Arles Photo Fest and a participant at the Mathieu Assellin’s Spring Photography Workshop.

Hlatshwayo’s work for the Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship is a development of his current titled Slaghuis. Having been brought up in a home with a tavern, Hlatshwayo seeks to explore the emotional and physical effects of growing up in such a space.

 About the mentor, John Fleetwood

John Fleetwood (b. 1970, South Africa) is a photography curator, educator and director of Photo:; a platform that develops and promotes socially relevant photography projects and photographers. He recently curated ‘Of traps and tropes’ as part of Kerkennah International Photography Festival (Tunisia, 2018) and ‘Five Photographers: A tribute to David Goldblatt’ (Johannesburg, 2018; Maputo, 2019). In 2017, he was guest editor for Aperture’s Platform Africa edition. He curated ‘Cities and Memory’ as part of the Photo Biennale in Denmark (2016). From 2002-2015 Fleetwood was the director of the Market Photo Workshop.

As educator and strategist he has facilitated, organised and supported a range of different training interventions, activities and organisations through Photo:, including masterclasses, workshops across the African continent and further internationally including recently Kinshasa, Maputo, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Mindelo. He convenes democraSEE, an award and mentorship programme for Southern African photographers. Fleetwood works closely with the Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa and other institutions of learning and mentorship.

Fleetwood acts in various capacities in the following projects: Nominator: Prix Pictet Award, Paul Huf Awards, Joop Swart Masterclass, Jury member: CAP, Pride Photo Awards, The Fence.

About The Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography

The Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography has been developed to provide an emerging photographer the infrastructural support to develop a body of work. The mentorship has been created by the family of the late Gisèle Wulfsohn to honour her memory and her work; and is seen as an opportunity to continue her approach and interests in photography. Wulfsohn dedicated her life and photography to awareness, openness and respect; she worked on issues of democracy, HIV/AIDS and positive sexual identities, social inclusion and gender issues, and maintained a commitment to education and social change.

The Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography provides an emerging photographer with a grant to develop a proposed body of work, in conjunction with an identified mentor, thus a mentorship. In addition to the grant the fellowship offers the possibility of a solo-exhibition and a publication to accompany it.

About the Market Photo Workshop

For 30 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 – 1999. 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.

Market Photo Workshop is the recipient of The Principal Prince Claus Award 2018.

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

c/o Market Square

138 Lilian Ngoyi St

Entrance at Margaret Macingana Street

Newtown

Johannesburg

info@marketphotoworkshop.co.za

www.marketphotoworkshop.co.za

 

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