Thabiso Sekgala

Thabiso Sekgala (1981 – 15 October 2014) was a South African photographer. His work was about "land, peoples’ movement, identity and the notion of home". Sekgala's photography was published in a book, Paradise and exhibited posthumously at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Life and work Sekgala was born in Soweto, a township in the suburbs of Johannesburg. He was raised by his grandmother in a settlement near Hammanskraal, in what was then the rural Bantustan (or "homeland") of KwaNdebele,

He studied photography at Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg from 2007 to 2008. His photographs were, in the words of Hannah Abel-Hirsch writing in the British Journal of Photography, "united by their exploration of the notion of home, and the social, political, or economic conditions that may shape our relationship to it." In 2013 he lived in Kreuzberg in Berlin for a year-long residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and undertook a two month residency at HIWAR/Durant Al Funun in Amman, Jordan. He had a son and a daughter.

Publications with contributions by Sekgala Shoe Shop. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2012. Edited by Marie-Hélène Gutberlet and Cara Snyman. . Includes "Where is home?" by Sekgala. Peregrinate: Field notes on time travel and space. South Africa: Goethe-Institut, 2013. By Sekgala, Mimi Cherono Ng'ok, and Musa N. Nxumalo. Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art. Göttingen: Steidl, 2017. . With an essay by Daniela Baumann. Published on the occasion of an exhibition at The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany, 2017.

Solo exhibitions Homeland, Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, 2011

Awards 2010: Tierney Fellowship, New York City