Exhibition Type: Exhibition
Artist(s): Ronald Ngilima and the Van Kalker Studio
Venue: Sanlam Art Gallery
Address: 10 Wellington Rd, Durbanville, Cape Town, 7550
Opening: –
Exhibition End Date: 27 September 2026, 18:00
Description:
Peripheral Light explores the worlds of its sitters in South Africa from the standpoint of
participatory and community photographers in Southern Africa through rare and endangered
studio archives.
The Peripheral Light exhibition positions itself against dominant outsider
visual representations of Africa, its people and cultures that are either overly romantic or
pessimistic. Through the colonial, scientific eye and ethnographic photography, African
subjects were in general viewed as “tribal,” “different” and “exotic”. These “afro-romantic”
portrayals abound in western consumption of African cultures, lifestyles and traditions that
proliferate in first world museums, art galleries and educational institutions. Allied to this is
the flipside of African representation, of “afropessimism,” where a plethora of images show
Africa as a disaster zone—at war, desperately poor, in need of aid and simply a picture
opportunity waiting to happen for the international news trade. Simon Njami, one of the
cultural pioneers who has helped place African photography on the world map, grappled with
this issue in the compilation of Africa Remix, “It is impossible to separate the construct of
Africaness from its historical context, impossible for Africans to think of themselves in any
other way than as a reaction to other – in this case the colonisers.” (Njami, S. 2005. Africa
Remix: contemporary art of a continent: London, Hayward Gallery, p 54)
However Peripheral Light, is a rare assemblage of vernacular studio photography that does
something else. It presents ordinary Africans as how they want to be represented and offers
insights into an “identity in the making” shaped by historical regional contexts with the
portrait central in its place as a storyteller.
Curated by Paul Weinberg (Photography Legacy Project).
Presented at Sanlam Art Gallery.
