Paul Weinberg South African, b. 1956
This vivid portfolio provides a unique insider’s insight into how the elections unfolded, and reminds us of the idealism and commitment of the heady days of 1994.
Judge Johann Kriegler (Chairperson of the 1994 Independent Electoral Commission)
Paul Weinberg is a South African-born documentary photographer, filmmaker, writer, curator, educationist and archivist. He began his career in the early 1980s by working for South African NGOs and photographing current events for news agencies and foreign newspapers.
Paul Weinberg was a founder member of Afrapix and South, the collective photo agencies that gained local and international recognition for their uncompromising role in documenting apartheid, and the popular resistance to it. From 1990 onwards, he has increasingly concentrated on on in-depth project based photography.
Weinberg has built up a large body of work which portrays diverse peoples, cultures, and human environments 'beyond the headlines’, as he describes. It demonstrates a sustained engagement with indigenous people throughout southern Africa, particularly in rural settings.
His images have been widely exhibited and published, both locally and internationally. He initiated several major photographic projects, notably Then & Now – a collection of contrasting images by photographers from the collective photographic movement of the 1980s, taken during and after apartheid, which is travelling the world; Umhlaba – a project on land; and The Other Camera – a project about vernacular photography in South Africa.
He has produced twenty books as a photographer and author in his own right, and has been published in many anthologies and group projects. Weinberg has exhibited widely, locally and internationally. He won the Mother Jones Award in 1993.
In 1993 Weinberg won the Mother Jones International Documentary Award for his portrayal of the fisherfolk of Kosi Bay on South Africa's Natal North Coast.
He has taught photography at the Centre of Documentary Studies at Duke University (USA) and holds a master’s degree from the same university. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Economic History at the University of Natal between 1975-78; a Certificate in Photography from the Natal Technikon in 1978; and he achieved a Master's degree in Liberal Studies from Duke University in 2004-5. He lectured in Documentary Arts and Visual Anthropology at UCT and is currently a research associate at the South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, University of Johannesburg.
Together with David Goldblatt, Weinberg founded the Ernest Cole Award for photography in South Africa. He has worked extensively in photographic archives and is presently the curator for the Photography Legacy Project - www.plparchive.com
Weinberg lectures in documentary arts, and works as an independent curator, archivist and photographer.
PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOKS
1986 Beyond the Barricades (Aperture), joint editor and participating photographer
1989 Shaken Roots (EDA publishers), the Bushmen of Namibia (text: Megan Biesele)
1995 An End to Waiting (Independent Electoral Commission), South Africa's 1994 elections
1997 Back to the Land (Porcupine Press), a book on the return to land of dispossessed South Africans
1998 Fault Lines (University of California Press), a book on South Africa written by David Goodman
1999 In Search of the San (Porcupine Press), photographs and text on the lives of the modern San
2000 Once We Were Hunters (Mets and Schilt, David Philip), a book on indigenous peoples in Africa
2002 Durban: Impressions of an African City, (Porcupine Press) with David Robbins and Gcina Mhlophe
2002 The Church's Secret Agent (Press), editor, anthology of South African photography, 1976-1994
2002 Group Portrait, a story of a Zulu family (Tropical Museum, Amsterdam)
2003 Let's Eat! Children's book on food, (Oxfam UK)
2004 Travelling Light, personal collection of 25 years photography (UKZN Press)
2006 Moving Spirit, personal journey on spirituality in southern Africa (Double Storey)
2007/9 Then and Now the work of eight photographers curated and edited by Paul Weinberg (Highveld Press)
2010 South African Photography 1950-2010, contributing photographer
2011 World Documents, one of six contributing photographers from around the world
2012 Dear Edward, family footprints (Jacana)
2013 ViewPoints, editor, UCT and its Treasures (UCT Press)
2014 The Other Camera, curator (Center for Humanities, University of Michigan)
2017 Traces and Tracks, photographer and writer (Jacana) 2019 Musings in Muizenberg, photographer (Backline Press) 2021 EarthSongs, photographer (ESI Press)
