John Kiyaya

John Kiyaya was born in 1970 in Kasanga, a village on Lake Tanganyika, and raised in a fishing family of eleven children. In 1986, he developed an interest to photography after he met the writer Jean Rolin who offered him a camera. Soon after, Kiyaya started to photograph the inhabitants of his village and surroundings. He would often send his images to Rolin who would print his photographs with good quality and promote his work in Europe. The sale of the portraits allowed him to finance his studies and motivated him to pursue his passion for photography. Kiyaya’s photographs depict the daily life of his neighborhood, mostly fishermen, peasants, and workers, including special events such as birth, wedding, and celebration. His work brought him critical acclaim from international photography circles, first in France and then in the United States. In 2013, Kiyaya published a selection of his photographs in an eponymous book.

Jillian Edelstein

Jillian Edelstein was born in 1958 in Cape Town, South Africa. Upon graduating from University of Cape Town, she started working as a press photographer for The Rand Daily Mail and The Star in 1981. Whilst on assignment she captured an image that was selected for the World Press Photo contest. In 1985, Edelstein moved to London, UK, to study photography and later started working as a freelance photographer. Her portraits have appeared in many publications including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. In 1996, Edelstein returned to South Africa to document the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was published in 2002. The work was awarded the Visa d’or at the Visa pour l’image international festival of photojournalism in 1997, and the book Truth and Lies resulting from that work won the John Kobal Book Award in 2003. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally at many venues including The National Portrait Gallery in London and Robben Island Museum in CapeTown.

Maud Sulter

Maud Sulter was born in 1960 in Glasgow, Scotland, of Scots and Ghanaian descent. In 1986, after completing her studies in Photographic Theory, Sulter participated in a women group exhibition in London. Her practice included contemporary portraiture and montage and her work referenced historical and mythical subjects. Throughout her career and across different media, Sulter has questioned the lack of representation of black women in the history of art, and critically investigated the complex experiences of the African diaspora in European culture over the past six hundred years. For instance, she developed an important body of work called Syrcas which aims to revive the forgotten history of the genocide of black Europeans during the holocaust. Using photomontage, she juxtaposed canonical imagery from classical European art history with African art objects, overlaid on vintage postcards of picturesque, unspecified Alpine landscapes. Her photography was exhibited widely, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Studio Museum in New York.