Each of the seven jury members selected one photographer to be awarded special distinction and a cash grant. Here are the jurors’ special selections, with a brief quote from each juror explaining what they especially appreciate about these photographers and their work.
Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Lebohang Kganye works across photography, sculpture, and performance to reflect on personal and larger social narratives. For this series of photomontages, Khanye deftly reanimates family photographs of her deceased mother by superimposing herself, dressed in her mother’s clothing, onto the vintage images, creating a subtle meditation on the role of the family photograph and its ability to memorialize and connect us to the past. “This was my way of marrying the two memories (mine and of my mother), Kganye reflects. “I realised that I was scared that I was beginning to forget what my mother looked like, what she sounded like, and her defining gestures. The photomontages became a substitute for the paucity of memory, a forged identification and imagined conversation.” Kganye is a distinguished new voice in contemporary photography.