Joburg Photo Umbrella
JOBURG PHOTO UMBRELLA
Johannesburg, South Africa
November 2014
Three Brighton Photo Biennial projects form part of Joburg Photo Umbrella: The exhibition Return to Elsewhere and its digital iteration elsewhere.thespace.org plus The Photocopy Club – a Giant Collective
The Joburg Photo Umbrella is a photography festival dedicated to creating a platform and network focused on new photographers, developing photographic content and accessibility to photography as a medium.
Market Photo Workshop in partnership with the British Council (Connect ZA) invited photographers, artists, independent curators, arts organisations, institutions and galleries to submit project proposals to form the basis of the Joburg Photo Umbrella.
The aim of the open call for proposals was to create a new public platform for photography in Johannesburg and further engage a broader audience outside of the already established art and photography community.
Return to Elsewhere
Photographers, Kalpesh Lathigra (UK) and Thabiso Sekgala (SA), have used the framework of collaboration to develop work at the same time in two cities. Together, they have chosen to explore communities and the representation, exploring understandings of belonging, histories, silence, memory and loss.
Lathigra/Sekgala chose to begin their project in connection with Indian communities in two primary locations Marabastad and Laudium, South Africa and in Brighton, UK. Marabastad was a culturally and racially diverse community before forced relocation in the late 1940’s. Closeby, Laudium, on the outskirts of Pretoria was proclaimed an Indian Township in 1961 under the Group Areas Act. One of Brighton’s largest ethnic minority groups is of Indian descent, a community with an interesting historical back story relating to the British Indian Army, whose soldiers fought in WW1 and were temporarily hospitalised in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, a building inextricably linked with Brighton’s identity. Both photographers are interested in the role of photography in representing communities, creating narratives and raising questions around truth and fiction, notions of connection and disconnection.
For more information on this work, please click here.
Return to Elsewhere- Digital Iteration
If you can’t make it to South Africa, you can Click here to experience the project as a digital artwork.
Co-commissioned with The Space, a free website for artists and audiences to create and explore exciting new digital artwork. The digital artwork was led by photographers Lathigra/Sekgala.
Produced by Team2 Games, it further explores themes set out in the BPB14 exhibition through image and text.
Experience the digital artwork on your mobile, tablet or desktop via elsewhere.thespace.org.
The Photocopy Club
In partnership with Brighton Photo Biennial and Joburg Photo Umbrella, The Photocopy Club invited photographers of all ages and abilities to join them for a giant collective.
This project has brought international photographers and local communities together, making photography in print affordable and accessible to people from all different walks of life.
All Photocopy Club exhibitions are based on photographers submitting their work printed via the use of a black and white photocopier/xerox machine.
For an exhibitions showing during BPB14 and Joburg Photo, photographers around the world were formed collectives with their friends, family and peers and submitted on the theme of community.
For more information about this work, please click here.
