Originally from rural Eastern Cape town of Sterkspruit, Lihlumelo Toyana can be best described as a documentary photographer, a story-teller and visual activist who explores the challenges that arise where lives are caught between the past and the present (at least within the South African context). She documents social justice related issues of different groups in a contemporary and diverse society such as ours.
She has an undergraduate degree and a postgraduate diploma in Governance and Political Transformation from the UFS, and in 2014 she completed her certificate in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg.
In 2011 she co-authored a book titled The Great South African Teachers with Professor Jonathan Jansen and Nangamso Koza, and in 2015 she was part of the Free State regional Barclays L’ Atelier 2015 Art Competition. In 2016 she was part of collaborative photographic exhibitions namely 40/40 Politics of Photography, Joburg Art Fair and Pingyao International Photography Festival in China.
As an artist and visual activist, she believes that social documentary photography can be used as a tool and vehicle to channel change in our society and the world. She’s currently working on long-term documentary projects, which includes teaching photography to scholars. As a visual activist and photographer, Toyana sees a great need for critical political issues, human rights and social justice issues becoming more urgent in our society. Thus, in her work she attempts to look at these issues mentioned above. Through photojournalism and documentary photography as photographic mode, she strives to create spaces for the discussion of critical and difficult dialogues in South Africa.
Every day on her journey in photography, she’s provided with the very valuable realisation that photography remains one of the important tools of visual arts that work to communicate with emotions, thoughts and meaning.
Competition history:
2019 Entrant