The 4th Cape Town Month of Photography 2008 - 2 - 31 October, various venues, Cape Town

Festivities have already begun in leading up to the South African Centre for Photography’s 4th Cape Town Month of Photography 2008, or MoP4, as the Photographic world knows it. Officially set to open at the Iziko Castle of Good Hope on Thursday evening 2nd October at 6pm, this triennial festival will showcase a huge range of our South African photographers, from conceptualist fine artists to photojournalists and studio photographers. Curated by photographer and educationalist, Jenny Altschuler, this year’s festival promises to be an exciting balance of exhibitions, workshops, walkabouts, show - tell evenings and other events, celebrating the versatile range of visual expression and talent of a large selection of our country’s photographers. The education component offers long standing photographers as well new learners and the lay public opportunities to participate in photography related experiences that could extend their own capacities.

Cape Town city’s most prominent art and photo galleries will host the core exhibitions and workshops with large components in the National museum and National gallery sites. Joao Ferreira Gallery will present acclaimed award winner, David Lurie’s new body of work, Fragments from the edge, and Araminta de Clermont’s Life After. The Prestigious Michael Stevenson Gallery is already showcasing top photographic artist, Berni Searle as well as Egyptian-Parisian, Joussef Nabil. The AVA Gallery in Church street will open with Ian Engelbrecht’s Seed of Memory on the 6 October after an exhibition by 5 female photographers calling themselves The Leage of Anachronistic Ahistoric Photographers Specialising in Archaic Processes showcasing from 13 September to 3 October. The Photographers Gallery ZA in Shortmarket Street has the already successful new masters graduate, Barbara Wildenboer with her dissertation series, Present Absence/ Absent presence.
The Alliance Francaise in Loop Street will open on 9 October with Marie-Stella Von Saldern’s Miracles of Lourdes, France and Sean Wilson’s Memento Vevere series as well as Henk Mulder’s series on Beyond the body.

It is not often that international exhibitions can be afforded by our local cultural institutions, but the triennial this year has been granted a bonus by the Roger Ballen foundation who is bringing the highly acclaimed American Master of Photography, Stephen Shore, to Cape Town with a retrospective exhibition of will run for 2 months from Heritage day 24 September, 6pm at the Iziko South African National Gallery. Shore will also hold Masterclasses while he is here during October. My Life, an exhibition of colourful representations of their home environments, by the youngest photographers on the festival, 5th Grader Greyton pupils, will run concurrently in the national gallery’s Annexe, as a reference point also for a large schools photography workshops programme, already running from 1st September. This exhibition has just returned from the prestigious Heresford Photographic Festival in England. Producing mobiles in The Happy Mobile workshop, conceptualized by Shani Judes of Word of Art, and partnered by Cape Africa Platform and the Iziko Education team, will encourage children to see the most positive sides of life and think on others less fortunate than them. The mobiles will be donated to children’s homes around the peninsula.
Down the pathway from the
National Gallery, at the Iziko South African Museum, 13 Photographers will be showcased from National Heritage day opening at 2pm with marches and musical performances leading up to the opening. The public is invited to partake of the images, snacks and celebration of photography. Showing in this space from 24 September to 24 November are George Hallett and Santu Mofokeng, 2 of South Africa’s most prominent photographers, as well as acclaimed West African photographer, Sergio Santimano, American South Africans Ian van Coller and Tessa Gordon, Tracey Derrick, Jenny Altschuler, Raquel de Castro Maia, Colin Stephenson, Garth Stead, Pieter Bauermeister, Barry White, Nic Bothma and Madge Gibson.

Then and Now, probably the most prestigious exhibition on the festival, compares images shot both before and after South Africa’s transition to democracy by South Africa’s most well known photographers, most of whom were active in the Afrapix agency during the struggle, Paul Weinberg, David Goldblett, Guy Tillim, Cedric Nunn, Eric Miller, Giselle Wulfsohn, Graeme Williams, George Hallett. Also at the Castle is an exhibition balancing an extending past the documentary genre style of
Then and Now exhibiton, called Construct. The Photographers Gallery ZA will present work for this exhibiton by Dale Yudelman, Abrie Fourie, Nomusa Makhubu, Roger Ballen and Lien Botha, with more conceptualist themes.
A third exhibition at the castle, under the theme of Emergence and Emergency, curated which is also the overall theme of the 2008 Cape Town Month of Photography, will showcase young upcoming photographers, not yet well known but with strong bodies of work. Among these are 7 Gauteng photographers, photographers, Buyaphi Precious Mdledle, Anneke Laurie, Christelle Duvenage, Malcolm Phafane Dhlamini Jabulani, Whitney M. Rasaka and Chris
Kirchhoff as well as German Jess
Meyer and English Richard Mark Dobson. Cape Town based brother
team, Husain and Hasan Essop, as well as Andrew McIlleron, Sean Wilson, Michael van Rooyen, Brett Rubin, Damien Schumann, Sharon Peers, Melinda Stuurman, Zandile Tisani and Candice Chaplin will also present new and exciting bodies of work in this show.
A balanced series of exhibition
shops, talks and master classes will run the length of the festival with something for everyone, from newcomers to the medium to specialists working in photography for many years. Please call 0214624911, 0826815513 or 0829355522 for the full daily schedule.

See www.photocentre.org.za for the full bonanza.