SSouth Africa is the country over which the sun pours its light in such a way that the hills of the savannah glow as if from within and on the boulevards of the big cities the passers-by seem to be illuminated as if they were in the limelight of searchlights. But there is hardly anything of that to be seen in the pictures of Santu Mofokeng. Until his death in January 2020, the photographer devoted himself to the corners and life situations in South Africa where things are rather gloomy. He was never concerned with the colors of the country. All the more about the conflict between black and white.
Born in Johannesburg in 1956, orphaned at the age of four and raised in the township of Soweto, which was founded a few years later, he was only too familiar with the hardships of a life of poverty. He found his way to photography via a job as a darkroom assistant for a daily newspaper, but although he witnessed the conflicts during the apartheid era, experienced the reprisals and accompanied the demonstrations, he was denied a career as a photo reporter. He later explained that he had no car, not even a driver’s license. By the time he reached the editorial offices, others had long since spread their images there. So he began to invest his attention in long-term projects. And instead of looking for the motifs of individual, sophisticated news photos, from then on he bundled his photographs into photo essays that were to appear in books – and which later also found their way onto the walls of galleries and museums, including the German pavilion during the Venice Biennale.
Everyday life in the townships is rarely as chic and cheerful as it is on the advertising walls.
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Image: Santu Mofokeng Foundation, courtesy Lunetta Bartz, Maker, Johannesburg
It all started with “Train Church”, a series for which he accompanied people on their way to work in 1986. The train journey from the townships to the factories took hours. And the commuters used the time to celebrate such ecstatic services in the compartments that the journey was no longer just a purpose, but a program in itself.
Do hard workers need a deodorant stick?
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Image: Santu Mofokeng Foundation, courtesy Lunetta Bartz, Maker, Johannesburg
Of course, Santu Mofokeng’s photographs are also politically charged. Membership in the photographer collective Afrapix, which actively campaigned against racism and inequality, was a moral duty, so to speak. But his observations were more subtle than the reporters’. Because he was looking for the ordinary and not the extraordinary, he was closer to everyday life than his colleagues. The fact that he encountered injustice and social catastrophes that were not solely due to the harsh politics of the whites led to a visual complexity that was not content with the categories of good and bad. Which isn’t to say he refrained from commenting; on the contrary. Santu Mofokeng could be critical to the point of cynicism. This is the case in the photo series that he dedicated to the huge billboards in the townships – a series of large-format prints that can now be seen in the Zander Gallery in Cologne.
Does anyone who doesn’t have a washing machine need laundry powder?
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Image: Santu Mofokeng Foundation, courtesy Lunetta Bartz, Maker, Johannesburg
Were the billboards originally erected to spread news and give the residents rules of life, especially hygiene, because nothing feared the white population more than the outbreak of diseases and epidemics that could spread to their neighborhoods, and later about dealing with AIDS, they were later used for classic advertising. Advertising for goods as well as for a way of life – which often enough missed the reality of life of those who were bombarded with it. So when Santu Mofokeng shows a woman balancing a heavy load on her head in front of the advertisement for a deodorant stick, then that is just as little pure documentation as the picture of a diamond as a symbol of eternal democracy. He created images of morals in which the motives of longing in the consumer world and the gloomy reality comment on each other. Dedicated to the turmoil of the world.
Santu Mofokeng – Billboards, Gallery Zander, Cologne; until March 24, 2023.