Ruth Seopedi Motau

Decades ago, in Meadowlands, Soweto, a young woman asked her father for a camera. What began as a simple request marked the start of a disciplined practice: she learned not only how to capture images, but how to develop photographs, transforming moments into lasting records. Through patience, technical skill and a deep commitment to storytelling, she honed her craft. Over time, her work grew in significance and reach, and she went on to become one of the most influential and inspiring photographers in history.

Journalist, storyteller and documentary photographer, Ruth Motau (@seopedi_8) was the first black female photographer employed by a newspaper in South Africa following the end of apartheid. She captured some of the most defining moments of the 1990s as South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy. She became South Africa's first female photo editor for three top newspapers and Nelson Mandela's official photographer. Motau's exceptional work on documentary photography in South Africa has been recognised on countless platforms worldwide.

When Motau entered the field, it was profoundly male-dominated. At the time, she did not even realise she was the first Black woman to be employed in that space; her focus lay elsewhere. Motau was driven by a deeper purpose: to challenge and correct the persistent misrepresentation of Black people in the media. Her work, rooted in social documentary and influenced by photojournalism, centres on the lived realities and marginalisation of Black individuals and communities.

For Motau, photography was never just a profession; it was a tool for truth-telling and historical preservation. This commitment to authenticity and dignity shaped her entire career. Her perspective was further enriched through her work as one of Nelson Mandela's photographers. In Mandela, she encountered a leader who embodied inner peace. His presence affirmed her belief that, while not every problem can be solved, meaningful change begins with forgiveness and a positive outlook. These values resonate throughout her photographic practice.

One of the most significant examples of this commitment is Shebeen (1997), a photodocumentary series created in the Dobsonville Hostel in Soweto. In this body of work, Motau documented the everyday realities of the community, capturing not only hardship but also humanity, connection and endurance. For her, the shebeen was far more than a social gathering space; it was a living archive of resilience and shared history.

Motau has always understood that photography carries a profound responsibility: the obligation to reveal truths that are often deliberately silenced or forgotten. By documenting spaces like the shebeen, she sought not to sensationalise suffering, but to preserve lived experiences with honesty and respect. In doing so, she ensured that these stories would remain part of the nation's collective memory rather than being erased from its broader narrative.

Shebeen is defined by a quiet intimacy born from time, trust and sustained presence. Motau photographs not as an intruder, but as someone who belongs, listening before looking and allowing moments to unfold naturally. Her commitment to black and white is both aesthetic and philosophical, stripping away spectacle to foreground truth and lived experience. By working without flash, she minimises disruption, allowing the camera to witness rather than dominate. The resulting images are grounded in dignity, presenting their subjects as fully present and self-possessed.

The series thus operates as an act of cultural memory-making. Its historical importance lies in its function as a counter-hegemonic archive that intervenes in dominant historiographies of Black life in South Africa. By documenting ordinary social life through relational proximity, Motau reframes everyday experience as historically meaningful. Her work resists colonial and apartheid-era epistemologies that positioned Black communities as objects of surveillance and study rather than a site of identity and memory. In doing so, Shebeen generates knowledge from within the community itself, functioning as both a cultural celebration and a historical intervention, reshaping how Black life is documented and remembered.

While Motau's photographic achievements position her firmly within the canon of contemporary South African visual culture, her most enduring legacy may lie in her commitment to knowledge transmission and intergenerational empowerment. Beyond authorship, her practice extends into mentorship and community-building, particularly in her dedication to creating access for young Black women within exclusionary creative industries. Motau reframes photography not merely as artistic production, but as a tool for agency and voice. This labour constitutes a form of structural intervention: opening pathways into spaces from which Black women have been systematically marginalised. Her insistence on telling affirmative, dignified and self-authored stories challenges deficit-based narratives and reorients visual culture toward representation rooted in affirmation rather than absence. In this sense, Motau's work is not only archival but also generative, producing new futures, new storytellers and new modes of representation grounded in solidarity and possibility.

Through her lens, she preserved histories often overlooked; through her mentorship, she reshapes the future of South African visual culture. Motau's work is both memory and movement.