Ernest Cole Award 2022 Recipient: Motlhoki Nono
Motlhoki Nono is the recipient of the Ernest Cole Award 2022.
The Ernest Cole Award wants to acknowledge the wider practise of photography and its fields of engagement, along with its potential for impact and change. Nono will receive R 75,000 to create her proposed project, she will be supported by a circle of mentors, and work towards a public outcome.
The Jury felt that Nono’s practise pushes the boundaries of photography in thinking about the power of the image as a social, historical and political reflection. Her proposed project directs our attention to the intensities of romantic love: the thin line between the violence and intimacy, especially towards the complexities of representation of black women in relation to romantic love.
Photo: is delighted by the Jury’s decision. Nono is the first woman to receive the Ernest Cole Award since its inception. We are thrilled to support Nono, her proposed project draws parallels between Ernest Cole’s pointed commentary on the lives of black people under apartheid, and her use of turning the lens outward (and inward) to interrogate and perform the black experience right now. Both Cole and Nono’s work is political, speaks with a clear and critical voice, at a particular moment in time when it is needed most.
About Motlhoki Nono
Motlhoki Nono (b. 1998 in Mabopane, Pretoria) completed her Honours in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her studio practice is currently based in Johannesburg, where she uses photography, video and printmaking as tools to investigate the intimacies and violences that are implicated in romantic love. She engages the nuanced ideas of inheritance, consumption, texture, and materiality to perform and document the internal lives and politics of black women in love. Her practice is characterised by a valorisation, problematisation and curiosity towards black love, as well as abstract narrative and relationalities of the domestic and heart spaces. She defines her practice as a decolonial and sociological enquiry into love, exploring how love manifests at the intersection of race, class and gender. Currently, Nono is interested in domestic gestures as a manifestation of love, and the domestic space as a site of self-erasure.
Photo: would like to thank the Advisory Panel; Ingrid Masondo, Justin Davy and Paul Weinberg, the Nomination Panel; Ashley Walters, Dean Hutton, Gabrielle Goliath, Jabulani Dhlamini, Simon Gush and Zen Marie, and the Jury.
We thank the Ernest Cole Family Trust, David Goldblatt Legacy Trust, and Photography Education Trust.
About the Ernest Cole Award
The Ernest Cole Award was established to commemorate Ernest Cole and to acknowledge him both as a key figure in the history of South African photography and as a contributor to the struggle against apartheid. Cole’s images are transformative, compassionate, and critical, and marks the importance of photography in history and art making.
Ernest Cole faced many struggles in his career as a photographer, struggles that lead to his exile and the struggles that continued in his time as a photographer in the United States and Europe. The Award is framed by the need to support and provide professional guidance to photographers facing various difficulties while trying to establish their careers. Conceptualised and operated from within South Africa, the ECA is an important identifier for photography practice in the cultural sphere of South Africa and for South African photography internationally.
The Award operates through a nomination and open call process. The 3-member Jury look at the nominated and open call submissions to independently select a shortlist of candidates from which a recipient is selected. The Jury’s shortlist consisted of Lunathi Mngxuma, Motlhoki Nono, Phumzile Khanyile and Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo.
About Photo:
Photo: is a multi-operation platform for the development and promotion of socially engaged photography practices, photographers, and critical visual culture.
Through curatorial and educational projects throughout the African continent and beyond, Photo: promotes emerging and practicing photographers and photography with the aim to encourage critical and experimental approaches/responses, that challenge and stimulate how we think about photography and our world.
Further, through commissioning, producing and connecting photography projects and practitioners, Photo: wants to encourage dialogue, exchange, engagement and participation.
Central to its vision, is the idea that photography can be a delicate tool for social change.
For information about the recipient and the Award, contact info@phototool.co.za or visit www.phototool.co.za, and access the Ernest Cole Award website, under the ‘Awards’ tab.
Posted 27/07/2022.