Jo Ractliffe

Jo Ractliffe is a South African photographer and teacher working in both Cape Town, where she was born, and Johannesburg, South Africa. She is considered among the most influential South African "social photographers."

She pursued her education in Cape Town, including her Diploma in Fine Art at Ruth Prowse School of Art, Woodstock, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts (1985) and her Master of Fine Arts (1988) at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town.

Starting from her first show, the Master of Fine Arts Graduate Show at the Irma Stern Museum, Ractliffe's photography has gained international attention with shows in South Africa, at the MET, MOMA, Tate Modern, and the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea. Okwui Enwezor has described Ractliffe as "one of the most accomplished and under-rated photographers of her generation." Ractliffe's works have been exhibited independently and in conjunction with other notable artists such as David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, William Kentridge, Pieter Hugo, and Zanele Muholi.

She has received numerous awards. Her photobook As Terras do Fim do Mundo was awarded "Best Photobook of 2010" at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel and she was nominated for the Discovery Prize at the Rencontres d'Arles Photography Festival in 2011.

She has held the Writing Fellowship at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in 2010; the Ampersand Foundation fellowship in New York in 2008; the Christian Merian Stiftung fellowship at iaab studios, Basel, Switzerland, in 2001; and the Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Vallais fellowship in Sierre, Switzerland in 2001.

She has had public or curatorial projects, including Johannesburg Circa Now, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa in 2004; Joubert Park Project, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2000, and End of Time Pinhole Photography Project, Nieu-Bethesda, Great Karoo, South Africa in 1999; and Truth Veils, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation; the Wits History Workshop, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ractliffe is also a senior lecturer at the Witwatersrand School of Arts at Wits University, Johannesburg. She has also taught at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria, and at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023