In 1988 Santu Mofokeng (born 1956) joined the staff of the African Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand as a documentary photographer and researcher. In this position, he began to record the lives of tenant laborers in the unremarkable township of Bloemhof, an agricultural town in Northern South Africa. Over the next several years, Mofokeng amassed what could be considered the core of his larger body of work: a set of interconnected photo-essays centering on the Maine family, with whom he stayed. Highly distilled yet immersive, Books Two through Four of the series Santu Mofokeng: Stories form a loose trilogy that describes how the residents of Bloemhof unwind, bury one of their own and gather together on one of the most consequential days in South African history.
