Kirsten Doermann

Market Photo Workshop

Established in 1989 by world-renowned photographer, David Goldblatt, the Market Photo Workshop has established itself as one of South and Southern Africa's foremost training institutions in the visual culture. Globally renowned, the Market Photo Workshop is regarded by many as one of the most important photography training institutions across the continent and beyond that provides access for aspirant young photographers from academically and/or financially challenged backgrounds with no access to photography and visual literacy training in other institutions of higher learning. By enabling access into the elitist field of photography, the Photo Workshop ensures that the photography landscape has a diversity of views and voices where use of the medium is democratised. The Market Photo Workshop offers practice led photographic training courses, outreach projects and archival services that respond to the complex backgrounds of education, culture, and identity within a contemporary understanding of photography and the social conditions of South Africa. This hybrid training method has provided many of the MPW's alumni with a competitive advantage which has led them to receive national and international awards and many have since gone on to influence and transform the landscape of contemporary South African photography. The Market Photo Workshop is a division of the Market Theatre Foundation that was declared a Cultural Institution in terms of the Cultural Institutions Act of South Africa, (Act no 119 of 1998).