February 17, 2026 - Photographer / Social - Street / South African

Billy Monk

Billy Monk was born in 1942 in Cape Town, South Africa, into the coloured community of the Cape Flats — the sprawling, impoverished townships to which non-white South Africans were increasingly confined under the apartheid system that had been formalised in law since 1948. His early life was hard, shaped by poverty, racial discrimination, and […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - Photographer / Social - Street / South African

David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt was born in 1930 in Randfontein, a gold-mining town on the Witwatersrand in South Africa, to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents who ran a small clothing shop. He grew up in the shadow of the mines whose wealth had built the region and whose labour practices — the systematic exploitation of black workers under […]

Read More

RESOURCES

This is where I keep the research — over 200 studies of the photographers, writers, curators and exhibitions I’ve found most compelling. Each entry offers a summary of their practice together with a few examples of their work, where copyright permits.

FOCUS


Browse by genre (use the hamburger menu above on mobile) — Street, Fashion, Landscape, Documentary and others. Most of these categories took shape during my MFA studies and many of the people here appear in multiple categories.

NATIONALITIES

View landmark exhibitions like New Topographics and The Family of Man alongside individual studies of Magnum photographers and many others, like the "Terrible Three", who have shaped the way we see.