Academic Writing

Chasing Shadows (2011) is a masterful overview of documentary photographer Santu Mofokeng’s work, spanning thirty years of his career. Mofokeng began as a photographer during Apartheid in South Africa, and strove to represent the realities of human existence and the social landscape of his time through his photographs. Chasing Shadows presents a finely curated selection of his best work; monochrome documentary photographs and written chapters from an array of his endeavours in South Africa and abroad, as well as an interview and commentaries from other artists. 

The book is divided into thematic chapters, arranged chronologically to present his career and development as a photographer. It is structured in a unique, almost multimedia format, containing verse, prose, photographs and copies of historical documents. Newspaper clippings and letters give the book a distinct scrapbook-like feel. The book is centred mainly around Mofokeng’s writing and photography, but also provides an in-depth interview of the photographer by Corinne Diserens and excerpts related to his work from various other writers. This interview explores his career and is split into two parts, segmenting his story between pre and post 1994 - the end of Apartheid. Effectively, the interview provides both context and insight into the photographer’s work, reflections and motivations, and is deliberately manifested in his own words. 

Mofokeng’s “chasing shadows” metaphor runs as a red thread through the book, chiefly conveying the challenge of capturing the essence of a time in photographs. In Invoice, Mofokeng elucidates that while the exact definition is lost in English, in indigenous languages the phrase “represents the pursuit of something real, capable of action, of causing effects - a chase perhaps joined in order to forestall a threat or danger” (p.7), which expresses the distinct emotion and objective he seeks to achieve in his work. Mofokeng states that black people in South Africa spend their lives “chasing shadows”, as we know he also does through his haunting and evocative photographs. His challenge in capturing this essence which he seeks is further explained in the quote from the chapter Chasing Shadows; “I am not certain that I captured on film the essence of the consciousness I saw displayed. Perhaps I was looking for something that refuses to be photographed. I was only chasing shadows, perhaps.” (P.109). This shows Mofokeng’s nature of self-reflection and criticism, and suggests his self-professed failure at achieving this objective in his images.

He elucidates further in Distorting Mirror/Townships Imagined, that “the challenge has always been to create images free of constraints imposed by the State” (p.74) suggesting that he has attempted to show his subjects independently of the oppressive political context, prioritising their autonomy without reference to the State. Similarly, Mofokeng is conscious of the global consumption of his imagery. In the copy of a letter written by Mofokeng on the Soweto Documentary Project (p.64), he states that “Soweto has become one [of] the most familiar photographic landscapes in the world today, along Somalia, Bosnia etc.” (p.64), contextualising the fight against Apartheid in the global media landscape. His work strives to counter these media tropes and aim to represent the residents of Soweto in an autonomous light. 

Mofokeng discusses at length his ongoing struggle to accurately represent the every life of South Africans. Train Church addresses what Mofokeng details as two essential aspects of life in Soweto; spirituality and commuting (p.19). The latter being an unnatural experience which was enforced on the native South African populations as they were pushed out of urban areas due to the harsh policies of Apartheid. The images in this series seem to depict moments that are both public and private, both routine and unique: people crammed in trains on their daily working commute. Similarly, in the Shifting Sand series, Mofokeng claims to have attempted to capture the “creative drama of life” in Soweto (p.45), in essence, celebrating a population that had long been discriminated against. Again, Mofokeng is deliberate in his self-critique of these attempted portrayals. In Rumours/The Bloemhof Portfolio, he claims; “I am finding it difficult to represent, in a meaningful way, people who have ceased to be just tenant labourers, farm workers” (p.46). It is this struggle that fuels him, along with a negative comment on his exhibition from a South African man, to rethink his approach to this documentary work. This eventually lead to his commencing the The Black Photo Album/ Look at Me project, depicting middle-class black South African family photos from the 1800s-1900s. Mofokeng comments that this endeavour itself was  “was driven firstly out of my own ignorance and curiosity” (p.12) as well has his need to re-contextualise the history of black South Africans. 

Another essential theme explored is that of appropriation of place and the notion of “home”, which he labels as a false political construction and appropriated space. Mofokeng expresses the weight of the history of Apartheid on the South African psyche. In Invoice, commenting that “one can’t travel far within this country before coming upon shadowed ground of negative remembrances of violence and tragedy” (p.7). His work addresses the meaning of living in a place with such historical sadness and how people continue to life in and around these spaces. He concludes in Santu’s Landscape that “these issues partly explain my landscape project: reclaiming the land for myself.” (p.190). The book showcases many of his black and white landscape images, which are expressive in their minimalism and deeply meaningful to  Mofokeng’s objective of reclamation and ownership of these spaces in his native land. 

Later in his career and post-1994, Mofokeng undertook photography projects abroad. In his effort to address these themes and to “embody the South African landscape”, Mofokeng was inspired to travel to other locations with similar dark histories or “shadow grounds” (p.7). In 1997, he travels to Europe to “see how other countries were dealing with places associated with negative memories” (p.7). Notably, he visits a concentration camp and documents the haunted, desolate landscape in his photography. Of his attempts to understand what to do with these places and their dark histories, he states in Invoice; “My forays into the metropolis of Europe have since convinced me of the futility of this enquiry. There is no model to follow. My efforts are tantamount to chasing shadows” (p.7). It is a depressingly poignant commentary on the collective human sentiment of this time. 

While the book contains an array of images, documents and texts on Mofokeng, there is perhaps no consistent “red thread” running through the book, aside from his photographs. Despite the analysis by Vogel and other writers which contextualise Mofokeng’s photography, the book is an artistic project for educated readers rather than an academic one. Readers looking for organised and concise explanations of Mofokeng’s may need to search elsewhere as the book presents rather an artistic agglomeration of profound and beautiful pieces to accompany and provide context to the photographer’s well-known photographs. 

Chasing Shadows (2011) provides a masterful and comprehensive introspection of Mofokeng’s work. The range of themes evoked through the photographs are wide-ranging, focusing on deep explorations and representation of identity, place and historical traumas. His black and white documentary photographs are intriguing and emotive, and deserve to be read in tandem with his reflections. As Vogel comments, “Santu is fooling us, when his pictures capture pastoral beauty” (p141), for they represent much deeper and considered stories.