ABSTRACT
South African history is usually illustrated by documentary photographs of state brutality or acts of resistance, images that brought the world's sympathy to the anti-apartheid movement but were less often seen within South Africa itself. African art scholars sometimes shy away from terms like Vernacular' and 'popular' in case they may imply that Africa does not have a history of fine art equivalent to Europe's. Bogumil Jewsiewicki's comments on the intersection of modernity, the individual and resemblance in 1970s painted portraiture and photography in the Congo has some relevance for an analysis of the South African pictures. In the early 1990s the contemporary photographer Santu Mofokeng began compiling images for "The Black Photo Album/Look at Me: 1890–1950". His project emerged in part from a desire to present an alternative recollection, a counter-archive of black experience during the colonial period. Black South Africans used photographic forms to create zones of freedom, conviviality and respectability - and to imagine a better future.
