Directors

Founder and Co-Director

Julie Bonzon is an art historian, photography curator, and lecturer specializing in South African photography and contemporary lens-based practices. She holds a PhD in Art History and is the author of The Market Photo Workshop in South Africa and the ‘Born Free’ Generation (2023). Since 2015, she has led research and curatorial projects on decolonial representation, particularly within African contexts. Bonzon has collaborated with institutions including Magnum Photos, Photo Elysée, the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, Fondation H, and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and has written for a range of scholarly and exhibition publications. She joined the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography as Associate Curator in 2025 and teaches at the University of Zurich. She founded The Photographic Collective in 2020.

Co-Director

Nadine Hounkpatin is an independent producer and curator. Rooted in a critical and transcultural approach, her practice explores how artists reinterpret heritage and open new horizons for contemporary creation. Co-founder of TheArtMomentum, she has collaborated with institutions including the Rencontres d’Arles (Associate Curator of the 2026 Louis Roederer Discovery Award), the Bamako Encounters (Kuma edition, 2024), FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, the Musée des Cultures Contemporaines d’Abidjan, the National Museum of Cameroon, the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle du Havre, the Cité internationale des arts, and the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. She has contributed to publications and exhibition catalogues, including Memoria: récits d’une autre histoire (Actes Sud, 2021), and has led a pioneering initiative dedicated to women artists from Africa since 2021. In 2026, she joined The Photographic Collective as Co-Director.

Members

Nonzuzo Gxekwa is a self-taught photographer from Ladysmith, KwaZulu Natal. Her approach to photography favours the everyday over the spectacular; sharing interesting and intimate moments through focusing the camera on what is around her as well as herself. Whether it is through street photography or the studio, her work explores the human condition in subtle and beautiful ways. Collaboration is a crucial part of her practice, she has worked together with a number of photographers and artists in Johannesburg.

Maheder Haileselassie Tadese is an Ethiopian photographer and visual artist based in Addis Ababa. Her project “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow’ won the CAP Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2023/24 and the PHmuseum Grant. Her work has been shown at Photo London 2024 and she has participated in the World Press Photo Masterclass and The New York Times Portfolio Review. Maheder has collaborated with institutions such as the Frobenius Institute, the University of Cambridge, and the Goethe-Institut, exploring the intersections of photography, history, anthropology, and architecture.

Pippa Hetherington (South Africa) is a visual artist specializing in lens-based and documentary work. Her practice explores themes of post-colonial identity, fragmented histories, trauma, and memory using photography, textiles, and rock pigment. She delves into stories of loss and remembrance, uncovering often-buried aspects of history. Hetherington earned a Master of Fine Arts with distinction from ICP-Bard, New York, in 2019, and was shortlisted for the Contemporary African Photography Prize in 2021 and 2022. She has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, with her work held in collections in South Africa and beyond.

Born in South Africa with Congolese ancestry, Lorraine Kalassa examines notions of home and identity through her family photo archive and her mother's memories. Her work involves revisiting ancestral archives as a form of pilgrimage, using various media to reflect on identity, landscape, and policies. Kalassa holds a Fine Arts degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts and an Honours degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Cape Town.

Matt Kay is a Durban-based South African photographer. In 2014, he received the Tierney Fellowship and was mentored by David Goldblatt at The Market Photo Workshop. That year, he was awarded the Ithuba Arts Fund and exhibited in Joburg Photo Umbrella and ‘Photography and National Trauma in South Africa’ at GUS Gallery. His series ‘The Front’ was shown at The Photo Workshop Gallery and KZNSA in 2015. Featured by the British Journal of Photography as a top emerging talent, his work has appeared in international festivals, including Biel/Bienne (Switzerland) and Printemps Photographique (France).

Ange-Frédéric Koffi was born in Korhogo, in the north of the Ivory Coast. He explores the complex articulations of movement, travel and wandering within the history and practice of photography. He applies contemporary postcolonial reflections through various forms and devices in the public sphere to generate a social impact. His work freely crosses disciplines as diverse as political history, exhibition history, anthropology and design. A graduate of the Sorbonne, the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin (HEAR) and the Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne (ECAL), Ange-Frédéric was recently for the FOAM 2022 awards (Amsterdam) and completed a residency at Zeitz Mocaa (Cape Town).

Ala Kheir was in born in Nyala, Sudan. He started practicing photography as a hobby while he was finishing a degree in mechanical engineering in 2005. In 2009, Kheir co-funded the Sudanese Photographers group with the aim to develop and promote photography in Sudan. His work has been exhibited internationally, notably in the Dakar Biennale, The Addis Foto Fest and the Venice Biennale. Kheir now runs ToV (the other vision), an initiative focused on photography education in Sudan.

Michelle Loukidis received her photographic training at TUT in Tshwane. She has trained and mentored young photographers for over 15 years at the Market Photo Workshop and run workshops in Sudan, Kinshasa and Cape Verde. Loukidis is the co-founder of Through the Lens Collective, a collaborative educational and developmental photographic space created by South African visual artists and educators. A fine artist herself, Loukidis has exhibited her photographs in solo and group exhibitions. She is based in Johannesburg.

Tshepiso Moropa is a Johannesburg-based collage artist with a background in Psychology, Linguistics, and Research. Her work intricately weaves archival imagery and materials to explore the experiences of Black people, the African diaspora, and historical narratives. Moropa's collages breathe new life into forgotten stories, creating powerful visual dialogues that connect the past and present. She has exhibited widely, including a solo exhibition at Eclectica Contemporary gallery in Cape Town, and her work has been featured in publications like 1854.Photography and The Mail & Guardian. Moropa is also the recipient of the 2024 CAP Prize Award.

Amilton Neves Cuna is a photographer based in Maputo, Mozambique, and Tampa, Florida. He explores societal issues through storytelling and documentary techniques. Cuna has trained at the Sooke Photography School in Canada, Nuku Studio in Ghana, and the International Urban Photography Summer School at Goldsmiths University in London. His work has been featured at the Franco Moçambicano Cultural Center in Maputo, and in galleries across Ghana, Portugal, Brazil, Ethiopia, and Canada. His collection Madrinhas de Guerra was shortlisted for the International Contemporary African Photography Award (2018) and won the Palm Springs Photo Festival Portfolio Prize (2018).

Léonard Pongo is a visual artist and filmmaker based between the DRC and Belgium. He is renowned for his mixed-media installations that integrate textile, photography, various printing techniques, and moving images. In 2023, he was a Blackrock Senegal resident and is currently an associate researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. His monograph, ‘The Uncanny’, was published by Gostbooks in August 2023. Pongo’s recent projects include ‘Primordial Earth’ and the upcoming film Tales from the Source, which will premiere in the fall 2024.

Francis Nii Obodai Provençal is based in Accra, Ghana, and Maputo, Mozambique. He works with photography, audio, and text, focusing on using photography to record and celebrate the unseen and everyday aspects of life in Africa. His profound interest in how the past is remembered is partly influenced by aphantasia, a condition that prevents him from forming mental images.

In 1998, he co-founded Nuku Café in Accra, which later evolved into Nuku Studio and eventually the Nuku Photo Festival, Ghana’s first photography festival. Nii Obodai’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Addis Ababa Festival, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Bamako Encounters.