A celebration of women photographers

28 August 2020

Francki Burger, a part-time lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology’s Department of Visual Communication (Photography) and celebrated photographer, was part of a select group of women whose work was featured in an online exhibition by Through The Lens Collective (TTLC). The exhibition, titled Everyday a Woman, highlighted the work of women photographers from across the African continent as part of Women’s Month.

Francki Burger, a part-time lecturer at the Department of Visual Communication (Photography).

TTLC is a collaborative, educational and developmental photographic space created by South African visual artists and educators who share a commitment to, and appreciation of, the photographic medium on the African continent. 

Francki’s photographs portray landscape and history, in particular how politics, race, and violence are embedded/layered within the landscape.

“Historically, landscape in South Africa acted as a symbol of intimacy, a layered network of meanings and a place where cultural identity could be inscribed and imagined,” she says.

“I’m particularly interested in the role of the photographer in documenting the landscape. I examine archival images taken by official and amateur photographers of various battlefields, as I believe that traces are still present on the landscape – a landscape littered with political ideologies that inform our identities. This view regards landscape conceptually, as a space of shifts and changes, rather than physically,” she adds.

Francki’s work has been exhibited internationally and her career is marked by several accolades. She received the Brait-Everard Read prize, which included an exhibition at the Everard Read gallery, Johannesburg, as well as the internationally acclaimed Tierney Fellowship prize, and participated in a group exhibition in New York, 2009.

In 2012, she acted as curator for two group shows at Speke Photographic Gallery @ Circa in Rosebank, Johannesburg. In 2013, she completed an intensive Alternative Photography course in Rochester, USA, learning wet and dry-plate collodion, an 1860 photographic process. Her work was also included in the 2016 exhibition, South Africa: Art of a nation, at the British Museum, London.

Francki says having her work exhibited by TTLC is valuable exposure and that she is proud to have been part of it.

To view the exhibition, please CLICK ON https://www.throughthelenscollective.com/

https://wwwthroughthelenscollectivecomblogeveryday-a-woman-month-of-august

Some of Francki’s images featured in the online exhibition by Through The Lens Collective.

For more information on the Tshwane University of Technology, please contact Willa de Ruyter, Corporate Affairs and Marketing.
Tel: +27 12 382 5352   Email: deruyterw@tut.ac.za