Contending Cultures & Creative Commerce in a South African Photography Studio.

An exhibition of photographs curated by Dr Steven Dubin, from the archive of Kitty’s Studio, Pietermaritzburg 4-22 August 2013.

“The past cannot speak, except through its archive.” Stuart Hall 1984

About the exhibition:
For more than a decade, a Johannesburg garage held a marvelous secret: an archive of over 1,400 photographic negatives produced by Kitty’s Studio in Pietermaritzburg between 1972 and 1984. Poor and working-class patrons — classified by the apartheid government as African, Indian and coloured — came there to be photographed by Singarum Jeevaruthnam Moodley (1922-1987), a.k.a. Kitty, and members of his family. A selection of 80 images from the archive will be shown publicly for the first time in the exhibition ‘Developing Characters: Contending Cultures & Creative Commerce in a South African Photography Studio’.

Daringly constructing a broad range of identities and multiple forms of self-representation, the sitters appear to be both familiar and distant. Subjects range from traditionally attired individuals to hip characters. Some are clad in the garb of Zionists or sangomas, kitted out in sporting attire, or wearing the uniforms of nursing sisters or municipal employees. They reveal longing, pride, affection, playfulness, conformity and defiance. This exhibition provides an unprecedented opportunity to glimpse into the lived and imagined lives experienced by those classified as ‘non-whites’ and ‘whites’ under apartheid that extend beyond the sensationalised media images of the time. (https://artthrob.co.za/)

210mm x 210mm

R1,250