NWO grant for Patricia Spyer
About the project
Prof. Dr. Patricia Spyer and Prof. Dr. Robert Ross (Humanities) have been awarded a grant for their project “Photographic Traditions in Black Popular Modernities: Towards a Socio-historical analysis of the visual economy in and beyond South Africa” within the Cultural Dynamics Program of NWO (€450.000). The project includes two PhD projects—one focused on vernacular township photography in its relation to rising consumption and urbanization and the other on the role of Zulu studio portraiture in the construction of a Zulu ethnic identity.
Important aim
An important aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon. This will be achieved through the organization of historical workshops and traveling exhibitions centered upon vernacular photographic material.