ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of contemporary photography in South Africa, this chapter interrogates performative photography and its role in the flow and volatility of images. Using the notion of visual currencies (the recurrence, current-ness, exchange and circulation of specific tropes), I discuss performance in photography and how gender and race become articulated. Focusing on the artists Tracey Rose, Athi-Patra Ruga, Kudzanai Chiurai, Thania Petersen and Lebohang Kganye, this chapter engages with the predicament of the circulation and conversion of values in recurrent imagery in performative contemporary South African photography. Performative photography, in which historical as well as canonical photographic imagery is appropriated, is politically assertive. However, the theatrical, performed, decadent image also forms part of a visual currency through which tropes of race, gender and sexuality within the mise en scène of historical violence become exchangeable and consumable aestheticised images.
