Middle East & Africa
Santu Mofokeng
Miriam Maine’s funeral, ca 1990
c.1990
Santu Mofokeng, Miriam Maine’s funeral, 1990. Photography.
Santu Mofokeng’s experiences during the turbulent time of the 1980s in South Africa led to a turn in his practice, opting to turn to the crowd, focusing on individual faces and bodies within the masses to tell a story of the collective resistance that is present in the daily life and surroundings of South African townships. Miriam Maine’s funeral urges the viewer to connect to the sadness they are witnessing in the scene. Miriam Maine — the sister-in-law of Kas Maine, a tenant farmer Mofokeng documented for historian Charles Van Onselen — was a respected member of the Bloemhof community. Miriam Maine’s funeral is photojournalistic documentation of bittersweet loss and the collective mourning of a community.
The photographic artwork of Santu Mofokeng (b. Soweto, South Africa, 1956), also known as Mofokengâ, explores the complicated societal paradigm of South Africa. Exploring rural farm life, townships, religious rituals and the quotidian life of Black South Africans, Mofokeng’s artwork significantly contributes to a greater understanding of development and identity in the South African context. Mofokeng’s acute insight into the cultural meanings in landscape is testified in his mastership of the photographic medium. Using black and white film as a reference to the documentary genre and a gesture of resistance to the color-rich saturation of consumer culture, Mofokeng’s work presents new meanings on the trodden landscapes Soweto, favoring memory and identity over ownership and power. In highlighting the impoverishment of South African landscape in the face of capital expansion, Mofokeng’s photographs implore emancipation from the global oppression of greed.