This past March photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa’s long-awaited, first comprehensive monograph was released by Aperture, the book spans many years of Zwelethu’s internationally celebrated career and portrays the urban and rural-industrial social landscape of South Africa. On the occasion of the book release, Zwelethu Mthethwa was joined by curator and dean of academic affairs of San Francisco Art Institute, Okwui Enwezor, in a conversation at the Aperture Gallery and Bookstore, at full capacity with well wishers, students, gallerists and fellow artists who’d come to hear this in-depth talk.

In this edited excerpt, Zwelethu Mthethwa presents his acclaimed portrait series, Interiors. Mthethwa shares his desire to create “a contemporary history” that portrays people in a humane light. Shooting primarily in the outer regions of Capetown for this series, Mthethwa paid special attention to the colorful decorations within his subjects homes and looked to show their beauty, dignity and resourcefulness despite the overcrowded living conditions of the outer-city. During their conversation, Okwui Enwezor and Zwelethu Mthethwa debate the role ethics play in the photographs and Mthethwa touches on the relationship he develops with his subjects, describing the shoot as “a difficult dance.”

View the talk in full here:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Click here to purchase Zwelethu Mthethwa’s self-titled monograph

Maputo, Mozambique, 2007 © Guy Tillim

Exhibition on view:
Avenue Patrice Lumumba: Photographs by Guy Tillim
Wednesday, April 29–Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Exhibition Opening & Book Signing
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 5:00 pm

FREE

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Harvard University
11 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
(617) 496-1027

Avenue Patrice Lumumba, an exhibition by the award-winning South African documentary photographer Guy Tillim, opens this Wednesday. The exhibition documents grand colonial African architecture and the way it has shaped the contemporary urban environment in Africa. As the first recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at the Peabody Museum, Guy Tillim travelled around Angola, Mozambique, Congo and Madagascar to photograph his vision of colonialism in Africa. Even though people are peripheral objects in these photographs, the images retain their intimacy, as evidenced by the number of personal objects, like an umbrella, a book or a purse, that were left behind.

A selection of photographs from the series was featured in the winter 2008 issue of Aperture magazine.