The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, FADA Gallery is proud to present:

In Black and White an immersive analogue photographic exhibition opening on 10 April at the UJ FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus at 18:00 for 18:30, and running until 24 May.

The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of walkabouts, discussions and seminars. Walkabouts with the artists will take place on the 10 May from 10:00 – 14:00 and a scheduled photobooth portraiture workshop with Thabang Radebe on 17 May from 10:00 to 14:00. Leon Krige will lead a Developing Masterclass on 24 May, with a quota of 15 participants.

In Black and White In aims to better understand the nostalgia for black and white photography in South Africa and consider what it may reveal about how contemporary photographers engage with analogue photography in ways that redress past inequalities.

Students at FADA have, over the last three years, experimented with black and white film, and their work will be displayed alongside the cameras and other bygone artefacts and media technologies that inspire analogue nostalgia, turning the FADA Gallery into a Learning Lab for making, teaching and experimenting. The gallery will become both a photo booth and a mobile dark room, where students and visitors can have hands-on experiences with analogue film. The exhibition also features the work of well-known South African photographers who engage with photography across the analogue and digital paradigms. 

The FADA Gallery is honoured to feature Prof. Annie van den Oever, a renowned expert in the field of Experimental Media Archaeology as keynote speaker, giving demonstrations in the use of artefacts from the EMA media archive in the gallery. She focuses on the potential of analogue technologies in the educational context, where over the last fifteen years popular photography has become increasingly nostalgic. This is reflected in analogue nostalgia, and amateur practitioners romanticising the physicality (tactile qualities) of analogue technologies in their digital photography, often posted on social media such as Instagram.

“This exhibition is unique in that it allows students and visitors to explore bygone technologies face to face and first-hand, experiencing the physicality of these media, and the nostalgia that they evoke.” says Dr Landi Raubenheimer Senior Lecturer and co-curator.

South Africa’s apartheid history is well-known in documentary images from its embattled years between the 1960s and 1990s in the work of Afrapix photographers such as Santu Mofokeng, Omar Badsha and many others. Black and white film has become characteristic of the South African documentary style in a way that is entangled with apartheid history. Nostalgia for analogue media is therefore loaded in the South African context, because black and white media have an associated political history most would not remember fondly.  

Click here to RSVP to the opening: https://forms.office.com/r/ZwpqcjUMc6

Click here to RSVP to the walkabouts: https://forms.office.com/r/DcD6YzWTz1

•              Sat 12 April – Workshop with Prof. van den Oever 11:00-12:30

•              Sat 10 May – Walkabout with curators and photographers 10:00-14:00

•              Sat 17 May – Developing Master Class with Leon Krige 10:00-14:00

•              Sat 24 May – Photo Booth portraiture workshop with Thabang Radebe – 10:00-14:00

The exhibition runs from 10 April until 25 May 2025.

UJ FADA Gallery hours: Monday to Friday 08:00 to 16:00 *The gallery will be closed to accommodate the Learning Lab on Wednesday’s between 12:00 and 15:30.

About UJ Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA)

FADA is on the University’s Bunting Campus in Auckland Park: FADA houses all the creative disciplines under one roof and with this we maintain a strong focus on sustainability and relevance, and engage actively with the dynamism, creativity and diversity of Johannesburg and the rest of the world. With the eight creative disciplines at FADA, Architecture, Interior Design, Industrial Design, Multimedia Design, Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Visual Art and Jewellery Design, we expand each of these fields beyond their traditional boundaries through internal and external collaborations.

For further information, and to arrange interviews with the curators or artists, please contact: Lesiba Molomo at fadagallery@uj.ac.za

Lesiba Molomo
lmolomo@uj.ac.za
011 559 3058
University of Johannesburg FADA Gallery
https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/art-design-and-architecture/fada-gallery/