Jo Ractliffe's Paris Exhibition Explores Post-Apartheid South Africa Through Landscape Photography

South African photographer Jo Ractliffe is the subject of a solo exhibition titled 'Out of Place / En ces lieux' at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, which opened in January 2026. Curated by Pia Viewing, the survey presents over a hundred previously unseen photographs that examine the aftermath of violence and historical trauma in Southern African landscapes. Ractliffe, who works from her studio in Fish Hoek on South Africa's Cape Peninsula, has focused for four decades on documenting the lingering effects of conflict rather than its immediate spectacle. Her notable series include 'Terreno Ocupado' (2007) and 'As Terras do Fim do Mundo' (2009–10), which document sites of the Angolan Civil War through seemingly empty settings that reveal histories of death and dispossession. The exhibition also features new work titled 'The Garden,' which centers on individuals creating personal spaces in South Africa's challenging West Coast environment. Ractliffe's practice was significantly influenced by a 1990 burglary that left her using a vintage Diana camera, whose imperfect images she felt reflected the uncertainty preceding South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. The artist recently experienced another burglary but continues to work from her studio, which includes a darkroom she returned to using in late 2024 to create analog prints for the Paris show. The exhibition aims to anchor Ractliffe's photographs more specifically to their geographical contexts, moving beyond abstract interpretations of landscape to emphasize particular places she has repeatedly documented.