Camera Austria
www.camera-austria.at

Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz 2019
to Lebohang Kganye

Lebohang Kganye, The Last Supper, from the series: Ke Lefa Laka: Heir-Story, 2013. Inkjet
print on cotton rag paper, 64 × 90 cm.

The jury of this year’s Camera Austria Award for Contemporary
Photography by the City of Graz:
Taco Hidde Bakker, freelance author, Amsterdam (NL)David Campany, curator, Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Heidelberg (GB/DE)
Julia Grosse, Contemporary And (C&), Berlin (DE)
Nina Strand, Objektiv, Oslo (NO)Reinhard Braun, publisher Camera Austria International, Graz(AT)has bestowed the award to South African artist
Lebohang Kganye
The jury founded their decision to honor Lebohang Kganye withthis award on the following statement:“Lebohang Kganye’s animated photography offers an inventive
look into her own family’s histories, and by implication the wider
history of the South Africa from before and during Apartheid. We
find her work to be bold, serious and playful in equal measure,while also being aesthetically innovative and politically relevant.
By unfixing and reimagining the family photo album, Kganye
investigates the instability and unreliability of memory in relation to personal and collective narratives. In her project ‘Ke Lefa
Laka: Her-Story’ (2013) she does so by channeling her late motherthrough found photographs, inserting herself alongside her inphotographs, and acting out her mother while wearing her clothes.
Her mother was important for Kganye, ‘because of Apartheid andthe history of our country, there is an absence of fathers in a lot ofblack families. I was raised by women in that sense, because, youknow, fathers and husbands were gone for multiple reasons.’ In
the follow-up series ‘Ke Lefa Laka: Heir-Story’ (2013) she dresses

up as her grandfather, and through this act looks deeper into hisopposition to Apartheid politics. She continues such explorationsin her ongoing series ‘Reconstruction of a Family’ (2016–ongoing), where she tries to locate her family’s history and plays out
the stories she has been told about her forebears. The jury considers Kganye’s work an important contribution to the global photographic scene and wishes this award to be an encouragement forher further artistic endeavours.”
The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by theCity of Graz is bestowed every two years on an artist who has published a noteworthy contribution in the magazine Camera Austria
International. The prize-money is Euro 15,000.
Lebohang Kganye’s work has been published in Camera Austria
International No. 144/2018.

Camera Austria
www.camera-austria.at

Lebohang Kganye, Kwana Germiston bosiu I, 2013.
Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 × 29.7 cm.

The Awardee:
Lebohang Kganyeborn 1990 in Katlehong (ZA), is an artist living and working in Johannesburg (ZA). Kganye received her introduction to photography
in 2009 at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, where shecompleted the Advanced Photography Programme in 2011. She also
graduated with a degree in fine arts from the University of Johannesburg in 2016 and counts among a new generation of contemporary South African photographers. She was the recipient of the Tierney Fellowship Award in 2012, leading to her solo exhibition “KeLefa Laka” in Johannesburg. She was also awarded the Jury Prize atthe Bamako Encounters Biennale of African Photography (ML) in2015 and was the recipient of the Contemporary African Prize 2016
in Basel (CH). Kganye recently received the award for the Sasol
New Signatures Competition 2017 in Pretoria (ZA), leading to a solo
show in 2018. Her work forms part of several private and public collections, most notably the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pennsylvania(US) and the Walther Collection in Ulm (DE).
Solo exhibitions
2018 “Ke Sale Teng,” Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria (ZA); “TellTale,” Market Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg (ZA)
2016 Afronova Gallery at The Armory Show, New York (US); Festival Africolor, Université Paris 13, Paris (FR)2013 ”Ke Lefa Laka,” Market Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg
Group exhibitions (Selection)
2019 72 Gallery, Tokyo (JP); Photo Ireland Festival, Dublin (IE);
The UPI Gallery, New York; 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair,
Afronova Gallery, Industria, New York; Coda Paper Art 2019, Coda
Paper Museum, Apeldoorn (NL); Wonder Photo Day, Taipei (TW);Beyond Boundaries, LensCulture Discoveries in Contemporary

Camera Austria Awardfor Contemporary Photography
by the City of Graz 2019

Lebohang Kganye, Ka mose wa malomo kwana 44 I,2012. Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 × 29.7 cm.

Photography, Aperture Gallery, New York; “Who’s Looking at theFamily, Now?,” Photo50 at London Art Fair, London (GB); Finalist
exhibition of the Arte Laguna Prize, Arsenale, Venice (IT)2018 “Remembrance,” Rose Gallery, Santa Monica (US); “Africa
State of Mind,” New Art Exchange, Nottingham (GB); “The Bricks
that Build a Home,” The Migratie Museum, Den Haag (NL); “Notthe Usual Suspects,” IZIKO South African National Museum, CapeTown (ZA); “Un air de famille” and “Parce que les Fantômes disparaissent au Lever du Jour,” H2M – Espace Contemporain, Bourg enBresse (FR); “Sans tambour ni trompette – Cent ans de guerres,”
Le Parvis centre d’art, Ibos (FR); “Faux Mouvement,” Centre Contemporain de Metz (FR); “Africa is No Island,” MACAAL, Marrakesh (MA); “Recent Histories: Contemporary African photography and video art in dialogue with African photography from theWalther Collection,” Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (NL); “Re*Creation, Non-Work: Occupied by Leisure Time,” Fotograf Festival#8, Prague (CZ); 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Afronova
Gallery, Somerset House, London (GB); Sony World PhotographyAwards Exhibition, Somerset House, London
2017 “Tell Freedom. 15 South African Artists,” Kunsthall Kade,Amersfoort (NL); “RESIST(E),” Printemps Photographique Afrique du Sud, NEGPOS, Nîmes (FR)2016 “Give Me Yesterday,” Fondazione Prada, Milan (IT); “RecentHistories: New Photography from Africa,” Walther Collection Project Space, New York and Ulm (DE); “Studio Bamako” in the scopeof European Month of Photography, Kehrer Gallery, Berlin (DE);“Photo Biennale, Cities and Memory,” Brandts, Odense (DK);“L’Autre Continent: Artistes, Femmes, Africaines,” Muséum d’histoire naturelle du Havre, Le Havre (FR)2015 Jury award “Coup de Coeur,” Rencontres de Bamako (ML);“The View from Here,” Tiwani Contemporary, London; “Now you
see me, Now you don’t,” International Schiller Days, Mannheim(DE); “Trek, Following Journeys,” SMAC Gallery, Cape Town(ZA)

Camera Austria

Camera Austria Awardfor Contemporary Photography
by the City of Graz 2019www.camera-austria.at

Lebohang Kganye, O emetse mohala, from the series: Reconstruction of a Family, 2016–ongoing. Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 64 × 90 cm.

Bibliography (Selection)
Le Métier de Photographe en Afrique. 10 Ans d’Afrique in Visu
(Paris: Clémentine de la Féronnière, 2017).
ELSE (Lausanne: Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne, 2016).
L’autre continent. femmes, artistes, africaines (Le Havre: Muséum
de l’histoire naturelle du Havre, 2016).
Telling Time. Rencontres de Bamako Biennale Africaine de la Photographie 2015 (Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, 2015).
Eyes on, Eyes from Africa (OFF the Wall Editions, 2015).
My Joburg (Lyon: Éditions Fage, 2013).
Ke Lefa Laka (Johannesburg: Market Photo Workshop, 2013).
The Award:
The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by theCity of Graz was established in 1989 and is bestowed every two years on an artist who has published a noteworthy contribution in themagazine Camera Austria International and has made an important contribution to contemporary photography. The prize-money isEuro 15,000.
Previous recipients of the Camera Austria Award include:
2017: Jochen Lempert (DE); 2015: Annette Kelm (DE); 2013: Joachim
Koester (DK); 2011: Heidrun Holzfeind (AT); 2009: Sanja Iveković(HR); 2007: Marika Asatiani (GE); 2005: Walid Raad (LB); 2003:Aglaia Konrad (BE); 2001: Allan Sekula (US); 1999: Hans-Peter
Feldmann (DE), 1995: David Goldblatt (ZA); 1993: Seiichi Furuya(JP / AT); 1991: Olivier Richon (CH/GB); 1989: Nan Goldin (US).
The jury members:
Taco Hidde Bakker
works as a writer, editor, translator, researcher, and lecturer. His
writings about art and photography have been published in (art-ist’s) books and periodicals as Camera Austria International, FoamMagazine, British Journal of Photography, The PhotoBook Review,and others. His first volume of essays, The Photograph That Took
the Place of a Mountain, was published by Fw:Books in 2018.
David Campany
is a writer and curator. His projects include A Handful of Dust
(MACK, 2015), The Open Road: Photography and the American
Road Trip (Aperture, 2014), Walker Evans: The Magazine Work(2014), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (2010) and Art and Photography (2003). Currently, he is curating The Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie 2020, which will take place in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen
und Heidelberg.
Julia Grosse
is a journalist, art historian and co-publisher and editor-in-chief ofthe art magazine Contemporary And (C&). She is also editor-in-chiefof the recently launched magazine Contemporary And América
Latina. Until 2013, she worked as an arts correspondent in London
for die Tageszeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, ADMagazine, SZ Magazin as well as Süddeutsche Zeitung. Grosse has
published widely and is the co-editor of various books.
Nina Strand
is a photographer and author as well as the founder and editor of theNorwegian photography magazine Objektiv. Most recently, she published the artist’s books Residency (Subjektiv Press, 2019), STAFFET (Objektiv Press, 2017), Arbeid, Age before Beauty, Kunstnerlønn (self-published, 2016) as well as Dr. Strand, a photo diary which
was also presented as an exhibition in 2015. She is currently receiving
a work grant from the Arts Council Norway (2012–20) and was supported by the Norwegian Photographic Fund in 2005 and 2015. Since
2007, her essays about photography are being regularly published inIDEER and Dagbladet.