History: A work by Ruth Motau on at the analogue photography exhibition In Black and White at the University of Johannesburg.
Photo albums are a portal to another time — in which we might not even have been alive — and they allow us to find out more about people and spaces.
That’s how I got to know that my mother was more than just my mother. Before she was the woman who packed my lunch and reminded me to take a jersey, she was a young girl, a student, a dreamer. She had secrets and desires captured in the grain of 35mm film.
She kept those rolls of film hidden in a cupboard that also held her ID book, her old payslips and an expired passport. It was a sacred place, guarded by dust and silence.
I would sneak into that drawer like a pilgrim seeking truth, pull out the strips of negatives, and hold them up to the light.
Through those tiny images, I saw her dancing barefoot at a house party, smiling in oversized sunglasses, standing next to strangers who looked like friends. Those glimpses into her past softened me. I loved her more tenderly, knowing where she came from.
That memory came rushing back when I stepped into the In Black and White analogue photographic exhibition at the UJ FADA Gallery. I was twenty minutes late — blame the Joburg traffic — but as soon as I walked in, time slowed down.
I was met by Dr Landi Rauben-heimer, senior lecturer in design studies and the exhibition’s co-curator, with Bongani Khoza, lecturer in multimedia. They greeted me warmly as we stood in a space that buzzed with stillness and stories.
The room was filled with black-and-white images — arresting, nostalgic, deliberate.
Works by South African legends like Santu Mofokeng and Ruth Seopedi Motau lined the walls. Their presence was not intimidating, but rather grounding. Their photos stood shoulder to shoulder with pieces by emerging photographers, bridging eras through shared humanity.
In the middle of the gallery were analogue cameras — some familiar, most foreign to my eyes. They were solid, heavy and commanding. One looked like it could double as a weapon. I almost knocked it over trying to get a better view of a photo.
A gentle warning from Rauben-heimer brought me back to earth.
“This project has been a long time coming,” she told me. “I realised that some students thought that the filters they use on social media were just digital inventions. But really, they mimic the aesthetic of analogue photography.”
The exhibition, she said, was born out of a desire to bridge that gap — between perception and reality, between the digital and the tangible.
Khoza nodded, adding that when the idea was proposed to him, he didn’t hesitate.
“There was always a disconnect between the theory we teach and the actual doing. This exhibition became a way to merge both worlds.
Students could see, touch, and feel the concepts they’ve been studying.”
The theme tying all these images together was portraiture. Not just the literal kind, but the kind that lingers — where a face becomes a map, a body becomes a story.
Khoza laughed when he recalled early student submissions that looked more like passport photos than portraits: “We had to show them there’s more than one way to make a portrait,” he said.
Portraits, as Raubenheimer explained, have an arresting quality.
“You capture someone in a moment, and that person will never be that age again, in that way again. There’s something deeply nostalgic about that.”
She believes this is what resonates with students who have grown up on curated timelines and filtered memories. These black and white photos, though old-school, speak the same language — one of longing and preservation.
As students wandered through the exhibition, some pausing to eavesdrop on our conversation, I was reminded of my mother’s hidden photo rolls. Just like those negatives, the images at In Black and White held echoes of stories, pieces of lives paused mid-breath. Each frame a whispered reminder we are always more than who we are in the now.
Raubenheimer and Khoza hope the exhibition grows into a movement, a curriculum, a conversation.
They see it as an invitation, not just for students, but for all of us to look again. To consider what we archive, how we remember and who gets to be seen.
And maybe, in looking back, we learn to see each other — and ourselves — a little more clearly.
The exhibition runs until 24 May at the FADA Gallery in Johannesburg.