The programme, now in its fourth year, is a mentorship established to commemorate the life of renowned photojournalist Edward Ruiz. It awards the recipient with the financial and infrastructural support needed to develop a substantial body of social documentary work, culminating in a solo exhibition hosted at the Market Photo Workshop.
The recipient also has the opportunity to work closely with a suitable mentor, who provides guidance and direction on the intended project.
AngloGold Ashanti, the main sponsor of the Edward Ruiz Mentorship, has funded the programme since its inception. The supporting grant from BASA, according to John Fleetwood, the head of the Market Photo Workshop, “will supplement the generous funding received from AngloGold Ashanti, and provide us with the support needed to not only host a successful exhibition, but to also help establish the career of a promising and highly talented photographer”.
Musa Nxumalo, the recipient for 2008, is working on a project to document black youth who choose to identify themselves with rock music and alternative culture. The project, Alternative Kidz, investigates how counter-culture can function as a site of complex self-fashioning and socio-cultural opposition.
Questions are raised over the nature of intentioned cultural alterity, and the status of contemporary post-colonial subjectivities, especially in relation to the emergence of new urban cultures and dynamics.
Nxumalo says that he hopes this project will “encourage cultural exploration among young South Africans”. Photographers Michelle Loudikis and Liam Lynch are the mentors chosen to help guide Nxumalo through his project.
For more information, go to www.marketphotoworkshop.co.za.
