This volume offers a concise introduction to the large-format color photography of Zwelethu Mthethwa
Mthethwa’s portraits of Cape Town citizens emphasize qualities of defiance, pride and endurance of
hardship, with what the New Yorker described as “an energetic ambivalence between documentary
photography and fine-art portraiture.”
From the series “Biblioteca de Fotografos Africanos PHotoBolsillo” by La Fabrica
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Zwelethu Mthethwa (1960) is a South African photographer and painter, born in 1960 in Burban, South
Africa. Mthewthwa studied art and painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.
Upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship, he studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology receiving a
master’s degree in Imaging Arts in 1989. After returning to South Africa and spending some time working in
business, he taught photography and drawing at the Michaelis School. He left the position in 1999 to focus
full time on his artwork. Rejecting the austere, journalistic black and white photography of South African
photographers like David Goldblatt and Roger Ballen, Mthethwa joined a new wave of post-apartheid
photographers who chose to work in color, which, he said “provided a greater emotional range.”