Santu Mofokeng’s biography, fact, career, awards, net worth and life story

Santu Mofokeng (October 19, 1956 – January 26, 2020) was a South African news and documentary photographer who worked under the alias Mofokengâ. Mofokeng was a member of the Afrapix collective and won a Prince Claus Award.

Career

Mofokeng was born om October 19, 1956, in Soweto, Johannesburg. While still a teenager, he began his career as a street photographer, went on to work as an assistant in a darkroom, and then he became a news photographer. Subsequently, he joined the collective Afrapix; he worked under the alias Mofokengâ. Initially he documented mainly the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

Mofokeng was known to be able to rearrange conventional subjection in a photographic presentation with a spiritual dimension; an example of this is Chasing Shadows from 1997. After starting off with street and news photography, he specialized in landscapes. In his images he presented them in relation to ownership, power, ecological effects and memory, but avoided an open political expression. His work showed his deep concern for the condition of the (biophysical) environment at the beginning of the 21st century.

At his exhibition Let’s Talk in 2010, he explained that the essence is not what you see in these photographs, but what you don’t see (but feel).

On January 26, 2020, Mofokeng died of progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative brain disease, in Johannesburg.

Publications with contributions by Mofokeng

• Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography. Göttingen: Steidl; London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011. ISBN 9783869302669; ISBN 9783869303062. Photographs by Jodi Bieber, Kudzanai Chiurai, Hasan and Husain Essop, David Goldblatt, Pieter Hugo, Terry Kurgan, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Berni Searle, Mikhael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, Nontsikelelo Veleko, Graeme Williams, and Roelof van Wyk.

Solo exhibitions

• 1990: Like Shifting Sand, Market Galleries, Johannesburg
• 1994: Rumours / The Bloemhof Portfolio, Market Galleries, Johannesburg
• 1995: Distorting Mirror/Townships Imagined, Worker’s Library, Johannesburg
• 1997: Chasing Shadows – Gertrude Posel Gallery, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
• 1998: Black Photo Album/Look at Me, Netherlands Photo Institute, Rotterdam
• 1998: Chasing Shadows, Netherlands Photo Institute, Rotterdam
• 1998: Lunarscapes, Netherlands Photo Institute, Rotterdam
• 1999: Black Photo Album/Look at Me, FNAC Montparnasse
• 2000: Chasing Shadows, Transparencies International, Berlin
• 2000: Sad Landscapes, Camouflage Gallery, Johannesburg
• 2003: Chasing Shadows, Memling Museum, Bruges
• 2004: Rethinking Landscape, Centre photographique d’Ile-de-France (CPIF), Pontault-Combault
• 2004: Santu Mofokeng, David Krut Projects, New York City
• 2006: Invoice Iziko, South African National Art Museum, Cape Town
• 2007: Invoice, Standard Bank Art Museum, Johannesburg
• 2008: Homeland Security, Johannesburg Art Museum
• 2008: Santu Mofokeng’s Landscape, Warren Siebrits, Johannesburg
• 2009: Mofokeng survey exhibition, Autograph ABP, London
• 2010: Chasing Shadows, Anne Arbor Institute of Humanities, Michigan
• 2010: Let’s Talk, Arts on Main, Johannesburg
• 2010: Remaining Past, Minshar Art Institute, Tel Aviv
• 2011–12: Chasing Shadows, Paris, Bern, Bergen, Antwerp

Awards

• 1991: Ernest Cole Scholarship, for study at the International Center of Photography, in New York City
• 1992: 1st Mother Jones Award for Africa
• 1998: Künstlerhaus Worpswede Fellowship, Germany
• 1999: Contre Jour Residency, Marseille
• 1999: DAAD Fellowship, Worpswede, Germany
• 2001: DAAD Fellowship, Worpswede, Germany
• 2007: Ruth First Fellowship
• 2009: Prince Claus Award, Netherlands
• 2016: International Photography Prize, Fondazione Fotografia Modena – Sky Arte, Italy