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The consistency of Dave Southwood's work across the photographic spectrum demonstrates a commitment to the craft of photography and its power to communicate subtlety. His images brim with humour and empathy - all subjects own their frame and are treated with care. Beneath the clarity lies an educated gaze that skilfully identifies and handles complex human problems.
A decade-long project photographing a flea market, Milnerton Market, has been made into a book and is published by Fourthwall Books; it contains essays by the renowned author Ivan Vladislavic. Other publications include Bill of Rights, a photobook that illustrates South Africa's 20-year-old Bill of Rights, with an introduction by Constitutional Court Judge Edwin Cameron, and MEMORY CARD SEA POWER, a broadsheet newspaper documenting the lives of rough Tanzanian Stowaways living under the bridges near Cape Town's harbour. In late 2018 he co-authored and oversaw the production and design of HUSTLES, a book about architecture and a portrait of Johannesburg.
Dave Southwood's photos can be viewed at The South African National Gallery, where his work made up part of three shows in 2010, two of which were broad surveys of South African art, The Finnish Museum of Photography, The Christoph Merian Stiftung, the collection of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, The Goethe Institut, The Spier Art Collection and private collections in South Africa and abroad.
He has also edited photo editions of magazines, taught at Universities and written for the art press. He has had invitations to talk at Yale (The MacMillan Center’s Council on African Studies and School of Architecture), the International Centre of Photography, Ohio State University, the University of South Dakota, the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch and many other tertiary Institutions.