By Phumelele Kunene
Um'sebenzi — meaning "the ritual" and/or "work" or "the event" — draws from Southern African cultural practices. Through images of traditional attire, ceremonial vessels, ancestral offerings, and animal symbolism, I create visual archives that honour indigenous knowledge systems while positioning them within contemporary art discourse.
Working primarily with wet plate collodion photography, an 18th-century analogue process that requires images to be prepared, exposed, and developed by hand while the glass plate is still wet, I intentionally slow down the act of image-making. This technical limitation creates space for presence, reflection, and preparation, mirroring the structure of ritual itself. For me, the photographic process becomes ceremonial, transforming each image into an act of witnessing and preservation.
I view photography as both documentation and activation. Each image functions as a site where past and present meet, where cultural memory is not frozen in time, but re-engaged and reinterpreted. My work resists stereotypical representations of African spirituality by presenting ritual objects and symbols with dignity, intentionality, and visual power.
