Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950

“Darkroom’s” eight sections highlight the ways that these artists have addressed South African culture from various perspectives, and their increased presence in the global art world since 1994. It examines the use of analog and digital media, still and moving pictures, and two- and three-dimensional formats to express relationships between mid-twentieth-century approaches and more recent ones, and differing concerns among artists of successive generations.

“The social and political transformation of South Africa is one of the most remarkable stories of the second half of the twentieth century,” says Alex Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. “To engage with it directly through the eyes of those who experienced and documented the anguish, turmoil and elation of the period is both uplifting and thought-provoking.”

This extensive exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Two-thirds of the exhibition will be at the VMFA, and one-third will be featured at the Visual Arts Center. A companion exhibition by contemporary South African artist and Richmond resident, Siemon Allen will be on view at the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University

Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and curated by Tosha Grantham, Consulting Curator. with the support of the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibition Endowment, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation