Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s photographic journey towards romantic pastorality

The entrance of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) is within earshot of Noord taxi rank. The bustling, noisy transport exchange is a living monument to the spatial planning that continues to underpin post-apartheid SA. For a taxi to Thokoza township in Johannesburg’s East Rand, where 2023 FNB Art Prize winner Lindokuhle Sobekwa grew up, one would have to first take one from Noord to the MTN taxi rank, and then onwards to Thokoza.

Once inside the gallery, however, where photographer Sobekwa’s exhibition, Umkhondo: Going Deeper is on show, there is extreme silence and a feeling of sanctuary. Umkhondo fuses Sobekwa’s two previous bodies of work, I carry Her photo with Me and Ezilalini (The Country). With Umkhondo, the photographer explores urbanity and rurality, belonging, loss and lineage personal to him and his subjects.

Growing up, Sobekwa’s mother told him that their ancestral home was in Tsomo and Qumbu in the Eastern Cape. “I had no strong childhood memories,” Sobekwa said “even though we used to visit during the December holidays when I was young. She told us that in case someone asked us where our original home was, which was often the case even though I was born and bred in Johannesburg.”

The setting of townships at the outskirts of metropoles is definitive of SA cities. The relationships that township dwellers have with rural SA is an extension of the notion of “home” and belonging.

Journeying is one of the major themes that Sobekwa explores in Umkhondo. In Germiston Bus Stop, travellers of different ages stand alongside their luggage; Ntabasgogo Qumbu shows elderly men sitting inside a Toyota Tazz driving in a rural setting and Amahashi wase Bathenjini depicts two horses on a homestead on a misty day. 

Umkhondo journeys towards an idyllic rural setting that is imbued with a romanticism unlike that of Sobekwa’s previous, more gritty works, like Nyaope early in his career and Daleside: Static Dreams thereafter. Donkey Church depicts a ruined church photographed from above, giving a sense of it being smaller than it is, while Symbol of Graves and My Mother Visiting Our Ancestor's Graveyard are photographed from the same level of the photographer’s eye, giving the viewer a sense of being at the same level as the subjects.

The softened colours and reduced contrast of these images help convey the irony of an idyllic rurality. Where the church might be derelict and the graves overgrown with grass and laden with scrap metal, they are still imbued with a romanticised pastorality.

That Sobekwa is a technically astute photographer who can hold his own and has shared space with luminary figures of SA photography has been made abundantly clear by the Goodman Gallery, which represents him. The gallery included him in a group show with Ernest Cole and David Goldblatt. Magnum Photo made him a full member in 2022, and the FNB Art Joburg Fair awarded him the 2023 Art Prize.

But as his photographic practice shifts towards personal themes, the style and treatment of those themes will also change. “I am still trying to find my footing in the Eastern Cape,” Sobekwa said.