I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR
The Everyday Lusaka Gallery is excited to announce our partnership with the inaugural Bakashimika International Photography Festival this June. As part of the festival, we present an archival exhibition that brings together two photographers: Alick Phiri and William Matlala in “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, curated by Sana Ginwalla and Dr. Andrea Stultiens.
Alick Phiri (b. ZW, 1948) is a Zambian photographer whose photography career began in 1965. He is one of the few surviving professionally trained black Zambian photographers who practised from the 1960s to 1990s in Lusaka. Alick makes a public debut of the black and white portraits he made of himself, as well as people outside their homes, with their families, or in the street. This exhibition also becomes the backdrop for the launch of his first book “Lusaka Street” authored by Sana Ginwalla which exclusively features his street photographs.
William Matlala (b. SA, 1957) made portraits during the last decade of apartheid. During the 1990s, William extensively documented the labour movement. The exhibition presents a selection of portraits produced between ca. 1983 and 1989. The Trimpak packaging industry, located in Germiston Johannesburg and its immediate environment form the backdrop to which people pose. William was a photographer and co-worker to those portrayed until the factory closed. William lives and works in Johannesburg and is still a practicing documentary and reportage photographer.
We are honoured to collaborate with Dr. Andrea Stultiens who works with William Matlala’s archive. Andrea currently is an artistic researcher and educator interested in images and imaginations of ‘Africa’, which she investigates in long-term and collaborative projects. She teaches at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (NL).
“I’ll Be Your Mirror” also features writing from Dr. Siyabonga Njica, a literary and cultural historian based at Cambridge University. His work draws on the histories of black transnationalism in the twentieth century, African and diasporic intellectual traditions, and the black literary and sonic archive.
