Icing on the cake at Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the exhibit of Jo Ractliffe was an unexpected bonus. Born in Cape Town in 1961, Ractliffe is a South African photographer widely respected yet still underappreciated. Emerging in the mid-1980s during apartheid, she chose a more indirect approach than her activist peers, focusing on landscape and space as a means of addressing political violence and its aftermath. Her images of South Africa and Angola capture empty places scarred by history, where human absence speaks as loudly as presence. We don’t see the events but we guess them, invited to think and reflect. A very different approach to photography compared to Martin Parr, and yet the reflection that emerges is just as meaningful.
