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Artist and researcher, Florenza Deniz İncirli, responds to Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s shortlisted photobook, 'I carry Her photo with Me'.
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"This is such a huge honour. I’ve looked up to the people who have received the Prize before so this is such a milestone. Given our times I think it’s such an important place to be a photographer and a storyteller in South Africa."
Lindokuhle Sobekwa
The deeply personal project began when Sobekwa found a family portrait with his older sister Ziyanda’s face cut out. It remains the only photograph he has of her. One day when the siblings were seven and thirteen, she chased him and he was hit by a car and badly injured. She disappeared hours later, only returning a decade later, ill. By this time Sobekwa had become a photographer. He tried to take her portrait, but stopped when she reacted angrily. Ziyanda died soon after.
I carry Her photo with Me combines photographs, handwritten notes and family snapshots. Through this scrapbook-like publication Sobekwa explores the memory of his sister and the wider implications of such disappearances – a troubling part of South Africa’s history. The work is part of his wider practice on fragmentation, poverty and the long-reaching ramifications of apartheid and colonialism across all levels of South African society.
South Africa. Johannesburg. Thokoza. 2023. Khumalo street where accident happened. © Lindokuhle Sobekwa
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Employing a scrapbook aesthetic with handwritten notes, I carry Her photo with Me is a means for Sobekwa to engage both with the memory of his sister and the wider implications of such disappearances – a troubling part of South Africa’s history. The book complements his wider work on fragmentation, poverty, and the long-reaching ramifications of apartheid and colonialism across all levels of South African society.
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