Montelongo holds degrees from the Institut de Sciences Politiques de Paris (BA), from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (MA) and is pursuing her PhD at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Montelongo is interested in the complex relationship between the simultaneously evolving practices of photo-documentary, photojournalism and landscape photography, particularly in relation to the global circulation of images of apartheid South Africa. Her research explores the landscape photography of South African photographers David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng and Jo Ractliffe, as being disruptive of canonical uses of the genre. Montelongo is also interested in providing a critical response to the construction of “African photography” as a category, by focusing on the historically specific conditions of the photographic image in the context of apartheid, while expanding her analysis of the genre of landscape beyond the medium of photography.
Weinberg is a South African-born photographer, filmmaker, writer, curator, educationist and archivist. He began his career in the late 1970s by working for South African NGOs, and photographing current events for news agencies and foreign countries. He was a founder member of Afrapix and South, the collective photo agencies that gained local and international recognition for their uncompromising role in documenting apartheid, and popular resistance to it. From 1990 onwards, he has increasingly concentrated on feature rather than news photography. His images have been widely exhibited and published, both in South Africa and abroad. Weinberg also initiated several major photographic projects, notably Then and Now, a collection of photographers from the collective photographic movement of the 1980s, Umhlaba, a project on land, and The Other Camera about vernacular photography in South Africa.
In 1993 Weinberg won the Mother Jones International Documentary Award for his portrayal of the fisherfolk of Kosi Bay, on South Africa’s north coast. He has taught photography at the Centre of Documentary Studies at Duke University, and Masters in Documentary Arts at UCT. He currently works as an independent curator, archivist and photographer.
For this second episode of the Critical Image Forum Dialogue Series, Daniela Perez Montelongo is in conversation with South African photographer Paul Weinberg where they discuss key issues pertaining to the role of photography in South Africa during the Apartheid and post-Apartheid eras. These include the changes in Weinberg’s way of working and taking photographs during the democratic transition during the end of Apartheid, his 1994 project Moving Spirit, which investigated a wide range of spiritual practices in South Africa, and his approach to teaching photography and role as a mentor for new generations of South African photographers. The last section of the conversation focuses on Weinberg’s exceptional work as an archivist committed to the preservation and democratization of South and Southern African archives, alongside his vision for The Photography Legacy Project, an ongoing endeavour to digitize these photographic archives. In the wake of the recent devastating fire at the University of Cape Town’s library in April 2021 and the destruction of some its most precious collections, Weinberg’s relentless call for the conservation of both physical and digital African photographic archives could not be more timely.
Critical Image Forum is a collaboration between the Belkin and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory with funding from the UBC Public Humanities Hub.
Recorded on February 18, 2021.
Montelongo holds degrees from the Institut de Sciences Politiques de Paris (BA), from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (MA) and is pursuing her PhD at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Montelongo is interested in the complex relationship between the simultaneously evolving practices of photo-documentary, photojournalism and landscape photography, particularly in relation to the global circulation of images of apartheid South Africa. Her research explores the landscape photography of South African photographers David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng and Jo Ractliffe, as being disruptive of canonical uses of the genre. Montelongo is also interested in providing a critical response to the construction of “African photography” as a category, by focusing on the historically specific conditions of the photographic image in the context of apartheid, while expanding her analysis of the genre of landscape beyond the medium of photography.
Weinberg is a South African-born photographer, filmmaker, writer, curator, educationist and archivist. He began his career in the late 1970s by working for South African NGOs, and photographing current events for news agencies and foreign countries. He was a founder member of Afrapix and South, the collective photo agencies that gained local and international recognition for their uncompromising role in documenting apartheid, and popular resistance to it. From 1990 onwards, he has increasingly concentrated on feature rather than news photography. His images have been widely exhibited and published, both in South Africa and abroad. Weinberg also initiated several major photographic projects, notably Then and Now, a collection of photographers from the collective photographic movement of the 1980s, Umhlaba, a project on land, and The Other Camera about vernacular photography in South Africa.
In 1993 Weinberg won the Mother Jones International Documentary Award for his portrayal of the fisherfolk of Kosi Bay, on South Africa’s north coast. He has taught photography at the Centre of Documentary Studies at Duke University, and Masters in Documentary Arts at UCT. He currently works as an independent curator, archivist and photographer.
Critical Image Forum is a research project that focuses on the political, ethical, aesthetic and social dimensions of expanded documentary practices. The Forum's primary medium of research is photography, with an interest in how the proliferation of moving images, performance, sound and digital networks have challenged and complicated the veracity of the visual document.
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