Tshepiso Seleke is South African cinematographer, known as “thedarkroomartist” from Soweto, Orlando – a place of rich history and culture but also of great struggle. He works within an imagined space of a bittersweet reality – of black people having come this far but also not having gone anywhere at all; the collective black experience still tells issues of systematic oppression and political and social injustice. Being careful to set a specific tone of representation, Seleke captures his subject in socially provocative backgrounds with subjects that act suspended from the circumstances; forging the past and the present. He is a voice for those who have been stripped of individual agency and power and those who have their agency but are still working with limited spaces. He has had his images exhibited at various galleries and spaces such as Fotoza, Newtown, Rand Club, Museum Africa, MMarthouse, Barnard gallery Cape Town, Eclectica contemporary Cape Town and Photo London in the United Kingdom. He has a diverse field of experience – from being an IT technician to being a professional cinematographer and a visual artist, and within those spaces having worked with big companies nationally and internationally such as Isidingo and National Geographic, to name two. Having to exhibited in He hopes to see more black people taking up space and finding their voice.
I am from Orlando East, Soweto and this significantly informs the narrative of my work – growing up in a dominantly black neighborhood that has a rich history and also have first-hand experience with many of the struggles and triumphs of the collective black peoples made me passionate about thinking critically about representation because there is a great amount of stories that have been left out regarding black lives and black people in history; because black history has been for a long time hidden, denied and erased and through staging an imaginative space in some of my work it allows me to bring out those unacknowledged identities of black people, the richness of our culture, spirituality, language, and the richness of our skin – my photographical work is a means to empower the self through representation after being oppressed for so long. Through documentation of the social and economic positionality of black lives, I feel my work gives a platform to the marginalized people whose voices are silenced.
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Institute Artist
Matt Shonfeld
Tshepiso Seleke
