The Roger Ballen Centre for Photography hosts a one-night event that brings fashion photography into conversation with live performance.

6pm Doors open | DJ set + refreshments

7pm Live performance by Black Coffee fashion label

7.30pm – 8.30pm Koto Bolofo keynote address

About the exhibition: Fashion_The Image

Fashion_The Image is a major new photographic exhibition examining how fashion imagery has shaped visual culture in South Africa and across the continent. Presented across two interconnected centres in Forest Town, Johannesburg, the exhibition brings together photography, film, installation, and an expansive public programme—celebrating fashion photography as one of the most influential visual languages of the last five decades.

Curated by Sharon Armstrong in partnership with Aspasia Karras (Editor of Wanted Magazine), and in collaboration with the African Fashion Research Institute, the exhibition is conceived as a wide-ranging survey of fashion photography’s development on the continent.

A special focus is given to Koto Bolofo (born in Lesotho, raised in South Africa, now based in Paris), presented for the first time in South Africa within a wider photographic lineage of African authorship and influence.

The exhibition is proudly realised with the support of the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, the Presidential Employment Stimulus Fund, the National Arts Council, the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS), and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

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