The Photographic Collective (TPC), in partnership with the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, will present I Witnessed This, a group exhibition of thirteen photographic artists from across Africa and its diasporas.
The exhibition opens on Thursday 3 September, 6–8pm, and remains on view from 3 to 30 September 2026 at The Old Granary Building, 11 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, 8001, as part of the Cape Town Photography Festival.
I Witnessed This is presented as part of the Cape Town Photography Festival 2026, whose theme this year is TRUTH. Photography has long been trusted as evidence; today, images are easily manipulated, re-contextualised, and weaponised. Under the theme of TRUTH, the festival examines photography’s role in shaping belief, memory, and power, not as a search for certainty, but as an inquiry into how truths are produced, challenged, and resisted. I Witnessed This takes up that inquiry directly, asking not what a photograph proves, but what truth it carries, and from what position.
The exhibition takes as its starting point the Foundation’s long-held conviction that truth is not merely a fact to be stated but a power to be exercised, and that speaking truth to power is an act of courage, witness and resistance.
Curated by Pippa Hetherington, a member of The Photographic Collective, the exhibition brings together portraiture, collage, fabricated imagery and archival work by artists whose practices span Sudan, Angola, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa. Rather than treating photography as evidence of what happened, the exhibition asks a harder question: what truth does a given work carry, from what position is the artist witnessing, and what has it meant to make that visible?
“To witness is not simply to document,” says curator Pippa Hetherington. “It is to be present, to be implicated, and to carry responsibility for what you have seen and how you choose to show it. What binds these thirteen artists is not a shared aesthetic but a shared ethical position: that representation is never neutral, and that bearing witness carries an obligation to the subject, to history, and to the viewer.”
“I Witnessed This speaks directly to the Foundation’s own commitments,” says Nazli Abrahams, Head of Programmes at the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. “Its artists understand, as Archbishop Tutu did, that truth is not merely a fact to be stated but a power to be exercised. We are proud to host this work, and to add our voice to its call: that bearing witness is an act of courage.”
Featured artists are Ala Kheir, Alida Rodrigues, Amilton Neves Cuna, Godelive Kasangati Kabena, Ibrahim Ahmed, Lorraine Kalassa, Maheder Haileselassie, Michelle Loukidis, Nii Obodai, Nobukho Nqaba, Nonzuzo Gxekwa, Pippa Hetherington and Tshepiso Moropa.
About The Photographic Collective
Launched in 2020, The Photographic Collective (TPC) exists to highlight emerging photographers and visual artists from Africa and its diasporas, and those whose practices have not yet gained international visibility. TPC connects practitioners across the field, brings long-overlooked archives to light, and champions new visual languages, fostering exchange between artists, curators, academics, students and collectors.
WHAT: I Witnessed This – Group Photographic Exhibition – Cape Town Photographic Festival
WHERE: Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, The Old Granary Building, 11 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, 8001
WHEN: 3 to 30 September 2026
INFO: T +27 (0)21 562 7524  | E solange@tutu.org.za. |  VISIT | Pippa Hetherington will be the guest of the Arts Round Up on FMR on 11 September 2026
TRUTH TO POWER EXHIBITION [18]
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