ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the works by two younger South African artists who do not exclusively identify themselves as photographers but who are using their family’s photographic archive to create evocative and aspiring new archives. They are both confronted with missing photographs and creatively use these gaps and omissions not only to imagine historical moments but also to link the records of the past to a future family. The keeping and re-telling of memories is often considered a female activity; this gendered coding of the personal archive is explored and questioned. The final shape in which Lebohang Kganye and Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi choose to present their photographic projects are films made out of still images: a photo-film. The analogue photograph, or the drawing painted after it, serves as a basic building block of the films and thus emphasises the materiality of the individual image. The interplay between the interruption of the cinematic illusion of movement and its functioning can turn these photographic films into impressive and affectionate documents that create imaginary archives, describe intimate details of each family’s migration stories, and at the same time reflect on the photographic medium and the process of creating images themselves. Formally and thematically, the works are thus close to the format of the photo (family) album: a privileged and emotionally charged object of remembrance.
