Phumzile Khanyile is a Johannesburg-based photographer and Market Photo Workshop graduate originally from Soweto. Phumzile’s work explores the lives of women through evocations of her own experiences, breaking down social taboos in explicit exploration of sexual politics. There is little distinction between her craft and her own life in the images, which read like a private journal of candid snapshots. Her gritty aesthetic, characterised by dark contours, soft focus, and lush textures, lends her work its notable emotive quality.

Since her recent debut exhibition at the Market Photo Workshop in 2017, Khanyile’s works has been extensively featured in the press, in publications such as Financial Times, Aperture, The British Journal of Photography, Elephant and Art Africa Magazine. Her series Plastic Crowns has been exhibited extensively at the Market Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg; Palácio Cadaval, Évora; the Bamako Encounters Biennale of African Photography and Iziko National Gallery, Cape Town. Khanyile was the 2018 recipient of the CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography.