Gaze in South African photography
prompt a new era in which vulnerable photographic subjects are becoming empowered participants in control of the means of their visibility.
This sets up a vastly different landscape for the privileged white male photographer starting out in 2017, particularly when they are drawn to documenting experiences of black pain and poverty. For Jono Wood, who recently exhibited at Circa for a show titled Dark City in which he was one of three young white men venturing into hijacked buildings in Johannesburg’s city centre, it remains important for privileged South Africans to go into these “dark” spaces and document them.
“I think that today it is not even about white South Africa but [about] middle-class South Africa,” Wood says. “I have developed a skill set that has allowed me to cross voids. What I’ve been able to do is stand on two sides of a river. Middle-class white South Africa might think they’re aware of what it’s like in a hijacked building but I can stand in these spaces and interact with the people and get a true firsthand understanding of what life is like
On the Mines
West
Ponte City
WYE,