I carry Her photo with Me

80 pp., b/w & colour illus., spiral-bound, MACK, UK, 2024

ISBN: 9781915743312

Documentary photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa employs a scrapbook aesthetic with handwritten notes to engage both with the memory of his sister Ziyanda and the wider implications of disappearances in South Africa.

He began this project after finding a family portrait with his sister Ziyanda’s face cut out. He describes her as a secretive, rebellious presence, and remembers when she chased him and he was hit by a car. She disappeared hours later and only returned a decade later, ill. When Sobekwa realised the family had no photograph of her he tried to take one but she stopped him. Ziyanda died shortly afterwards.

Includes a 15-page essay by writer and scholar Neelika Jayawardane, loosely inserted.

"[Sobekwa’s] exploration of internal struggles, and the external conditions that stamped his own family – all that which remains unspoken and unspeakable – makes his images dance with dimension and depth, full of ghosts and uncanny presences" The Conversation

"Creating compelling documentary photography, Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s work represents an explicitly South African narrative. He brings into focus a poignant reality in which both strife and soft moments exist, exposing, questioning, and reflecting on current times and experiences." FNB Art Joburg

Lindokuhle Sobekwa was born in Katlehong, Johannesburg, in 1995. In 2012 he participated in an educational programme teaching photography to high school learners in Thokoza township. In 2015, Sobekwa was awarded a scholarship to study at the Market Photo Workshop. In 2017 he was selected by the Magnum Foundation’s Photography and Social Justice Program to develop the project I carry Her photo with Me, and in 2018 was nominated to join Magnum Photos, where he was named a full member in 2022.