IN RESIDENCE
Tatenda Chidora
For our inaugural in residence project, we meet Tatenda Chidora in Johannesburg. Zimbabwean-born and Joburg-based, Tatenda is one of the most exciting photographers working in portraiture today. His work centers black men, interrogating ideas of masculinity while celebrating blackness without apology. He gets there through performance, through play, through a kind of staged intimacy that feels both tender and exacting.
Let’s start at the beginning. Tatenda, how would you describe your practice to someone meeting your work for the first time?
I’m a photographer and visual storyteller, with a foundation in fine art photography. Everything I do comes back to that, using the camera to investigate, play, and celebrate Black identity, masculinity, and place.
For those who don’t know you yet, who are you and what drives your work?
I’m a Zimbabwean artist based in Johannesburg. I work across commercial and fine art, but storytelling is the thread. I’m interested in the many ways we can see and experience Blackness, not just documenting it, but celebrating it. I use performance and play a lot to explore ideas around place, identity, and manhood. I’ve been fortunate to have the work travel. I won the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity Vol. 5 in 2023, was shortlisted for the CAP Prize in 2022, and have shown at 1:54 London and other festivals around the world.
What’s the body of work you’re most known for, or most proud of?
It’s portraiture. I keep returning to Black men as my subjects. For me it’s an ongoing study of masculinity, but on our own terms. The work is about celebration, exalting Black skin, showing softness and strength together, and creating space for all of that to exist in one image.
Why photography? Why keep coming back to it?
It started as a hobby. Now it’s my career and my livelihood. But it’s also still my first love. I hope I’m doing this when I’m old. I do it because I love the medium. And because I’ve been given a platform, and that comes with a responsibility to show the world how I see it.
We hear “African luxury” a lot. What does it mean to you?
It means going back to source. The continent has everything, the materials, the makers, the rawness, the richness. For too long those resources leave, get refined elsewhere, and come back to us as something else. African luxury, to me, is experiencing that wealth at the primary level. Through our artisans. Through our own hands. Really embracing that what we already have is the luxury.
Who’s an artist you’re watching closely right now?
What’s your first memory of discovering Leonard Pongo’s work — or of meeting him?
I found his work in 2015, in a copy of the British Journal of Photography. It was The Uncanny, his body of work from the DRC, all shot on black and white film. There’s a presence to his images even on the page. The contrast, the movement, it stays with you. That body of work still gives me goosebumps. And watching his evolution since then has been amazing.
Which galleries do you keep going back to?
Crying emoji! The Photographers’ Gallery in London. Its gentrification meets modern design, three floors of exhibitions, and the last time I was there the show was beautiful. But honestly, the bookstore is to die for. Then there’s MEP — Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. It’s been there forever. A classic. So many floors, always something different on. And again, the bookstore. I have a problem with photography bookstores.
What’s on repeat in your playlist right now? And who would you love to see live?
Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving has been on repeat lately. And I would love to see Benjamin Clementine live. Just once.
Is there a country you love visiting, or one you haven’t been to yet but really want to?
Nigeria and Uganda are at the top of my list right now. I’ve been to a lot of places, but those two carry something special for me.
Where do you go for coffee, and what’s your order?
I’m mostly a coffee person. Father Coffee. I get a double-shot flat white. Every time.
What was the last book you read?
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.
Through your work, what are you trying to say or address?
I’m trying to see — and show — the beauty in Blackness. The beauty in being Black. My work is an ongoing study of masculinity. There are versions of masculinity that keep taking from us as a society. I hope my work can push back on that a little and offer a different angle. Something softer, fuller, more human. Walk us through your process.
Where does a new project begin for you?
It always starts with research. Most of the time a new body of work comes from what’s happening around us, trying to translate current affairs, but through my lens. I spend a lot of time listening. Studying the subject, the things around the subject, and everything that affects the subject. I must sit in that space before I can make anything.
What’s exciting you creatively right now?
How does handcraft show up in your work?
