Towards New Proximities: A Conversation on Photographic Encounters Between Southern Africa and Mexico

This dialogue between South African photographer Jo Ractliffe and Mexican art historian Daniela Montelongo draws upon conversations initiated during Ractliffe’s exhibition Hay tiempo, no hay tiempo at the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico, in November 2018. The exhibition formed part of Hacer Noche, a project exploring rituals and practices around death and the afterlife in artworks from southern Africa. Hacer Noche also included artists’ residencies, workshops and a conference that aimed to connect guest artists, curators, art historians and the broader Oaxacan community. Hay tiempo, no hay tiempo comprised photographs taken from Ractliffe’s negative files from the mid 1980s to the present, and included images that have been widely circulated in exhibitions and books, alongside previously unpublished images. When conceptualising the Hacer Noche exhibition, Ractliffe proposed Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s (Mexico City, 1902–2002) photograph Striking Worker, Assassinated (1934) as the starting point for selecting works. In so doing, Ractliffe sought a fluid, associative process, engaging individual images, rather than a particular photo-essay. Unhinged from their originating intentions, groupings and contexts, the images could be encountered in new and unexpected proximities, not least in their physical relocation from southern Africa to Mexico for the exhibition. A year later, in August 2019, Ractliffe and Montelongo resumed their exchange during a research trip to South Africa undertaken by Montelongo. They continued their conversation during a road trip across the Western Cape, from the coast, across the mountains and into the Karoo desert. Reflecting on these two transnational encounters and their attendant discussions in the aftermath of a global pandemic generated a reconsideration of the role of photography in mediating such encounters, especially when international travel can no longer be taken for granted and communication faces a profound restructuring.