Since its inception in 2000, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has included a world-class photographic exhibition as part of the visual arts mix. This year’s exhibitors include Peter Magubane, Fanie Jason and Mike Mzileni.
Magubane began a distinguished photographic career for Drum magazine in 1955. At the Rand Daily Mail in the Sixties, he covered political events and worked for The New York Times magazine in the Eighties and Nineties.
Jason was brought up in Guguletu. In the early Eighties, he worked for Drum and Pace magazines. In 1999, he won the Abdul Shariff photo award and, in 2000, South Africa’s Fuji Press Award. Jason was awarded a Judges’ Special Recognition Award in the 2002 International Fund for Documentary Photography (Fifty Crows Foundation) for his Aids essay Life in Denial. In the same year, Jason was invited to participate in an ambitious photographic event, A Day in the Life of Africa, with the world’s top 100 photojournalists.
Mzileni was born in Berlin in the Eastern Cape and was featured in a World Press Photo Competition in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1966. In 1985, he was named JPS Sports Photographer of the Year and has judged the Fuji Photo Press Awards. In the Sixties, Mzileni worked for The World newspaper, City Press and Drum. He retired in 2000.
The exhibition has been coordinated by veteran photographer Rafs Mayet and Chris Ledochowski.