Jo RACTLIFFE (b. 1961)
Vlakplaas 2 June (Drive By Shooting)
1999
pigment print on cotton paper
edition 1/5
50 x 230 cm
On 2 June 1999, Jo Ractliffe travelled to Vlakplaas, the deserted farm west of Pretoria where a paramilitary hit squad of the security branch of the South African Police had tortured and killed opponents of the Apartheid government. She drove… Continue Reading
Nadir 14
1988
screenprinted, photographic lithograph
edition 1/10
57 x 89 cm
Nadir 15
1988
screenprinted, photographic lithograph
edition 1/10
57 x 89 cm
This photographic lithograph from Ractliffe’s dystopian Nadir series features a feral dog roaming about an urban wasteland of discarded trash. Dogs (dead, alive, wild, abandoned) are a perennial theme that runs through Ractliffe’s photographic oeuvre.
Nadir 16
1988
screenprinted, photographic lithograph
edition 1/10
57 x 89 cm
From The Johannesburg Series: Commissioner St; Sauer St Johannesburg Central; Sauer St cnr Bree St Newtown
2000 – 2004
pigment print on cotton paper
edition 1/5
50 x 200 cm
Jo Ractliffe’s photographs question the idea of the decisive moment and even the single image. In its multiple, sequenced views, her work conveys her interest in repetition with variance, each frame offering a slightly different view. This approach… Continue Reading
From The Johannesburg Series: King George St; Twist St Joubert Park
2000 – 2004
pigment print on cotton paper
50 x 200 cm
edition 1/5
From The Johannesburg Series: Commissioner St cnr Crown St JEPPESTOWN; Commissioner St MARSHALTOWN; Commissioner St cnr Smal St; Commissioner St cnr Eloff St JOHANNESBURG CENTRAL
2000 – 2004
pigment print on cotton paper
edition 1/5
50 x 200 cm
BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1961 in Cape Town, Jo Ractliffe studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, majoring in photography and printmaking. In 1991, she moved to Johannesburg and took up lecturing a post at the University of the Witwatersrand – also teaching at the Market Photo Workshop, founded by David Goldblatt. Since then she has taught within various formal and informal contexts, including at the Salzburg Summer Academy.
Since the 1980s, Jo Ractliffe’s photographs have reflected her ongoing preoccupation with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures in the country’s imaginary, particularly the violent legacies of Apartheid.
Ractliffe was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2022.
‘[Her] images bear witness to the complexities of a country scarified by the violence of Apartheid, as well as the aftermath of civil war in neighbouring Angola,’ reads the accompanying exhibition text. ‘While Ractliffe is often acknowledged as one of South Africa’s foremost social photographers, her stripped-back, often stark images to not sit typically within the social documentary genre. Ractliffe is drawn to quiet poetics, not direct political address, lyricism rather than invective. From decommissioned military outposts, to makeshift dwellings stalking by stray dogs, her subject matter is conveyed through a distinctive visual language marked by desolation and absence.’
Jo Ractliffe: Drives, the first US survey of the photographer’s work, took place at the Art Institute of Chicago (2020 – 2021).
Previous solo exhibitions include Signs of Life, Stevenson, Cape Town (2019); Hay Tiempo, No Hay Tiempo, Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo, as part of Hacer Noche, Oaxaca (2018); Everything is Everything, Stevenson, Johannesburg (2017); After War, Foundation A Stichting, Brussels (2015); The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015) and Someone Else’s Country at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, (2014)
Her photobooks include Jo Ractliffe: Photographs 1980s to Now (2020); Signs of Life (2019); Everything is Everything (2017); The Borderlands (2015), As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010) and Terreno Ocupado (2008). As Terras do Fim do Mundo was shortlisted in the category of ‘Best Photobook of 2010’ at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel (2011).
She has held fellowships with the Centre for Curating the Archive, University of Cape Town (2014); Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), Johannesburg (2010); Ampersand Foundation, New York (2008); the Christian Merian Stiftung fellowship at iaab studios, Basel, Switzerland (2001); and the Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Vallais fellowship in Sierre, Switzerland (2001). She was nominated for the Discovery Prize at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival (2011).