Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981) is a Johannesburg-based artist who works in multiple media, including film installation, video, photography, collage, and painting. Through his works, Subotzky attempts to engage critically with the instability of images, and contemporary politics of representation. His photographic works are revelatory of the systemic injustices wrought by South Africa’s colonialist legacy. In Beaufort West (2006–08), a series he premiered at MoMA, Subotzky focuses on the Beaufort West Prison, a single iconic building in Johannesburg. His introspective works, which juxtapose the prisoners inside with residents of the neighboring towns, from sex workers to privileged suburbanites, are the results of his fractured attempts to place himself in relation to the social, historical, and political narratives that surround him. His award-winning Ponte City project (2008– ) depicts residents in the titular Johannesburg residential tower, opposing the claustrophobic, dystopian architecture with poignant scenes of family life taking place within. Concerned with the relationship between social storytelling and the formal poetics of image making, Subotzky combines the directness of the social documentary mode with a questioning of the nature of the photographic medium itself. Against this background, we can hypothesize that unpeopled works with no obvious social commentary, may nevertheless be intended to provoke contemplation of such issues through their poetic beauty.

Subotzky’s work is collected widely by international institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington), Tate (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the South African National Gallery, among others. Recent awards and grants include the 2011 Discovery Award at Rencontres de la Photographie Arles, the 2009 Oskar Barnack Award, the 2008 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant, and the 2007 KLM Paul Huf Award. In 2017 and 2019, his solo exhibitions of performance and paintings, Mikhael Subotzky: WYE, and Mikhael Subotzky: Massive Nerve Corpus, took place at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. Subotzky has also worked on commission for many publications and selected clients which include Vogue Magazine (various countries) Time Magazine (US), Topic (US), and The Guardian (UK).

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