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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

CEDRIC NUNN - CALL AND RESPONSE

(“The Green Sisters”, Mangete, KwaZulu-Natal, 1982 by Cedric Nunn)

Currently running at The KZNSA Gallery is a solo exhibition by Cedric Nunn titled Call and Response which runs across all three galleries.

Cedric Nunn was born in 1957 in Nongoma, KZN, of 4th-generation mixed-race parentage, and raised in Hluhluwe, Mangete and Baynesfield. He began making photographs in Durban in the early ’80s but soon moved to Johannesburg and joined Afrapix. He has worked for newspapers, wire agencies, magazines and PR companies. Nunn has conducted photography workshops for churches and the labour unions, and served as the director of the Market Photo Workshop.

He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Wits School of Arts, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and The School for International Training. He has served on the national executive of the Professional Photographers of Southern Africa and been a judge of the Vodacom Awards and a judge and convenor of the Fuji Press Photo Awards. In 2011, he won the first FNB Joburg Art Fair award. Cedric Nunn has exhibited his work extensively in South Africa and abroad.

Cedric Nunn is one of the great discoveries in the middle generation of South African photographers. The central theme of the artist is social life in South Africa, both on the land and in the big cities. Nunn documents internal political confrontations among the black population, as well as the civil war of the 1980s and its effects. He is interested in the reality of apartheid, beyond the media-generated images and social prejudices.

Over a long period of time, he focused particularly on the people of KwaZulu-Natal, and in the neighbouring country of Mozambique. Call and Response features photographs from the late 1970s to the present day, offering a view of a previously unknown African world. In his aesthetically and compositionally unusual photographs, Cedric Nunn combines reality with poetry.

This exhibition is Cedric Nunn’s first mid-career retrospective. It currently tours throughout South Africa and Germany, and will be on display in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and in the USA.

Call and Response runs in the KZNSA Gallery until May 6. The KZNSA Gallery is situated at 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, in Durban. More information on 031 277 1703, fax 031 201 8051 or cell 082 220 0368 or visit www.kznsagallery.co.za