Lebohang Kganye Wins 2024 Deutsche BÖrse Photography Prize

South African multimedia artistLebohang Kganyehas been awarded the 2024Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prizefor her 2023 exhibition at Foam in Amsterdam, “Haufi nyana?I’ve come to take you home” (Too Close? I’ve come to take you home), which investigates concepts of home, belonging, heritage, and identity through life-size cutouts of the artist’s family, made from photographs. Kganye was chosen as the recipient of the prestigious £30,000 ($38,000) award from a shortlist that additionally included VALIE EXPORT, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad, and Hrair Sarkissian, each of whom received £5,000. The prize was presented at a ceremony at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on May 16.

“We are delighted to announce Lebohang Kganye as the winner of the 2024 prize,” said Clare Grafik, acting director of the Photographers’ Gallery, which administers the award, in a statement. “Her innovative use of photography brings together past and present to explore the political through deeply personal stories of her own family and history. Sometimes theatrical, always experimental, her use of photography and her own archives is powerful and refreshing.”

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation director Anne-Marie Beckmann praised Kganye for her “risk-taking exploration of her family history, [opening] up important discussions about the realities and consequences of apartheid.”

The thirty-three-year-old Kganye, who lives and works in Johannesburg, is known for a practice centering personal, cultural, political, and economic histories. Kganye’s mother died when she was twenty, sparking the photographer’s investigation of her family’s past through old photographs and performance, which she frequently combines, for example in works where she dresses as her mother and photographs herself, juxtaposing the new image with a historical one of her mother. She has brought the personal to bear as well in works examining South African history, particularly apartheid, for example by tracing the various spellings of her family’s surname.

“This work is really based on research that I’ve been doing since the moment that my mother passed away,” said Kganye in her acceptance speech. “So this moment is very much about a celebration of the legacy she’s left me . . . my inheritance, my heritage . . . and also really finding my identity as a young South African woman.”

Kganye’s work is on view alongside that of the other shortlisted artists at the Photographers’ Gallery through June 2.