Welkom Today

In the early 1990s Dutch photographer Ad van Denderen travelled to Welkom, a small mining town in South-Africa, to document the last days of apartheid. 25 years later his critically acclaimed photo book Welkom in Suid-Afrika was discovered by Lebohang Tlali (then a young art student in Cape Town), who grew up in Welkom’s neighbouring township Thabong. The book served as an eye opener: for the first time Tlali saw how the white community lived during apartheid. In 2016 Tlali decided to reach out to Van Denderen, marking the start of a great collaboration. Welkom Today combines new and historic photographs by Van Denderen, Tlali, and their students as well as images from family albums, newspaper archives, interviews by journalist Margalith Kleijwegt, and essays. In a multivocal, non-hierarchical way, the project opens up to multiple histories and perspectives, across generations and backgrounds.