PARIS.- Born in Cape Town in 1961, Jo Ractliffe is a major figure of contemporary photography, although her work has been little shown in France. Her oeuvre is often associated with discourse on violence and how trauma manifests in the landscape, marked by the legacies of colonialism, apartheid, and the scars of conflict in countries like Angola.

From the perspective of documentary photography, the singularity of her artistic approach lies in the way she represents the relationship between presence and absence. Her images, far from illustrating socio-political facts and events, encourage viewers to go beyond the surface and to look for the stories hidden deep in the landscape.

For the first time, this monographic exhibition examines the notion of “place” as a central theme of her work. For the artist, the spaces she photographs are not simply geographical locations or terrains shaped by violence and history, they are also places imbued with memory.

Each of her photographic series and videos are part of a process, an exploration of various aspects of South African history. Her work may be said to go beyond simple representation to offer a visual exploration of situations, conflict zones, and the traces of the deep social divisions caused by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

This exhibition traces forty years of creation, from the start of Jo Ractliffe’s career to her most recent series, entitled The Garden, presented here for the first time and produced with the support of the Jeu de Paume. Through eleven bodies of work, the exhibition highlights the evolution of her practice and explores how these landscapes reveal—or conceal—the visible and invisible traces of South African history.

In the 1980s, while South Africa was still regimented by apartheid, Ractliffe sought to find her position while questioning documentary photography. Rather than documenting events as and when they happened, she focused instead on their aftermath: the material and symbolic vestiges left behind. This approach is particularly evident in her Crossroads series, during a period of violence and destruction in the township, where she “depicts the impossibility of return, the eradication of all hope, the obvious fragility of belonging”.1

In the 1990s, during the period of democratic transition, Ractliffe embarked on a more experimental body of work. reShooting Diana (1990– 1999) spans almost a decade, covering Nelson Mandela’s release, the first two democratic elections, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. Using the Diana, a small plastic camera, this series gave birth to dark, grainy, blurred images that capture the tensions of a changing society. Presented here as a grid of forty images, they construct a sensitive cartography of turmoil and collective memory, where surveillance sites, transit zones, and deserted spaces intertwine.

From 2007 onwards, Ractliffe expanded her field of observation beyond her native South Africa, travelling several times to Angola, a country devastated by armed conflicts fuelled by Cold War rivalries. In Terreno Ocupado (2007) and As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2009–2010), she explores the lingering impact of these conflicts. “The peaceful nature of these images contrasts strongly with the violence and chaos of their subject matter.”2

With The Borderlands (2015), Ractliffe continues this exploration of areas experiencing geopolitical friction, with the aim of evoking these tensions through the South African landscape.

She visited the Northern Cape province, on the border between South Africa and Namibia, places that were once occupied by the military. In relation to this approach, the artist has said: “I thought about militarised landscapes: places outside the usual military apparatus, harnessed for the mobilisation of that war and its aftermath, but the history of land in South Africa is one of appropriation, exploitation and dispossession. Beyond their military occupation, each of the [...] sites embodies colonial violence, apartheid prejudice and the postcolonial struggles for redress.”3

In 1994, Riemvasmaak, located close to the Orange River, became the first case of land restitution in South Africa. Devoid of sensationalism, this series conveys an aesthetic of distance and restraint. The historical event itself is not depicted, but rather its imprint and the way in which the past continues to inhabit the present.

Between 2022 and 2024, Jo Ractliffe produced Landscaping, a new series continuing her exploration of the South African west coast, from Cape Town to the Namibian border. The artist travelled to St Helena Bay, Velddrif, Hondeklip Bay, Port Nolloth, and Okiep all places linked to salt production, fishing, and copper and diamond mining. These landscapes, shaped by the industrial history of the country appear empty and inhabited at the same time. Ractliffe rejects any romantic vision of the land. “Each site offers an opportunity to experiment with focal length, thereby also producing close-ups of materials extracted from the earth or the sea.”4

Finally, the exhibition presents the artist’s latest series, The Garden (2024–2026). In the mid-1980s, as South African townships were gripped by the violence of apartheid, many residents transformed vacant lots into places of memory, resistance, and community reconstruction. Forty years later, along Cape Town’s west coast, these acts of creation have continued in other ways, with gardens born from the ingenuity and resilience of the area’s inhabitants. Designed using salvaged materials, these gardens are at once places of refuge, acts of resistance, and actions that reflect the pressure of the real estate market and the growing mining industry that has disfigured the region. Each garden, whether devoted to remembrance, survival, play, or beauty, affirms the community’s capacity to invent meaning and recreate connections in the face of the disappearance of such places.

For Jo Ractliffe, returning to a place means questioning time and making the landscape a living witness of history. Her photographs inscribe memory in the present and transform the act of seeing into a critical gesture.

Curator: Pia Viewing

1. Pia Viewing, “The never-ending journey” in Jo Ractliffe. Out of place, exhibition catalogue, an EXB/Jeu de Paume co-publication, 2026
2. Idem
3. Jo Ractliffe, “The Borderlands” in Jo Ractliffe. Out of place, exhibition catalogue, an EXB/Jeu de Paume co-publication, 2026.
4. Pia Viewing, “The never-ending journey” in Jo Ractliffe. Out of place, exhibition catalogue, an EXB/Jeu de Paume co-publication, 2026