The Black Photo Album / Look at me (slide 10/80) – Santu Mofokeng (1997)
I’ve been meaning to do a post about the Santu Mofokeng slides currently on view at Tate Modern for at least a month. Now that I’ve finally got around to it, I can’t find the notes I took when I went to see it. Sorry. In brief, The Black Photo Album/Look at Me is a beautifully-installed, moving piece of work, exploring the social aspirations and self-image of working and middle-class black South Africans in the early twentieth-century. These smart, serious young tennis enthusiasts are just two of the individuals populating Mofokeng’s carefully arranged trawl through family photo albums. You can read more and view the images and texts on the artist’s website, but I really recommend going to see it in the gallery too – in the cave-like dark stillness, with the slides clunking past, it’s like looking down a tunnel to a hundred years ago.
Show: not sure how long it’s up for (several months at least) – check the website.
Opening hours: Daily, 10.00–18.00, Fri and Sat late til 22.00
Room 6, Level 2: Poetry and Dream, Tate Modern
Bankside, London
SE1 9TG
African Art in London 