Thalente Khomo: South African conceptual and fine art photographer exploring memory, healing, and womanhood

Thalente Khomo was born in Gcilima, Port Shepstone, and is now based in Durban, South Africa. She is an archivist in learning and a photographer working at the space between memory and lived experience.

Her practice is grounded in ancestral and childhood memories, allowing photography to become a space for remembering, restoration, and reimagining. Khomo’s practice is guided by identity, trauma, healing, and memory.

How did you get started in photography?

I was born in the rural village of Gcilima to very young parents and raised largely by women, especially my grandmothers. My names carry both affection and expectation: Thalente, “the one with many talents,” and Lindokuhle, “we are waiting for something beautiful.” 

I came to photography through grief. In 2004, at nine years old, I watched my maternal grandmother be buried. It was a photograph of her, taken before she passed away, that slowly replaced the image of loss with one of life. That experience continues to shape my work today.

Through photography, I search for memory, presence, and healing. I grew up across multiple homes, shaped by many voices, many women, and many histories. I was drawn to strong, elegant women both on screen and in my own family, and I understood early on that presence is worth recording.

I was also the girl who walked between 3.5 and 3.8 kilometres to school every morning and the same distance back home each afternoon. The way I grew up shaped how I see the world and how I understand beauty, resilience, and art.

My paternal grandmother’s magazines became some of my earliest windows into visual storytelling. One image, in particular, changed my life. I still remember vividly the day I read the article that accompanied it.

It was not only the photograph itself that moved me, but the story behind it. For the first time, I felt a sense of recognition and representation through a photographer whose face and name felt familiar to me.

Until then, photography had seemed distant — something men did, something outside my own identity. That moment shifted my understanding entirely and showed me that there was space for me in that world, too.

I hold a BTech in Photography from the Durban University of Technology and became the first person in my family to graduate. My practice spans fine art, fashion, and portraiture, centred on women, their lives, their beauty, their resilience, and their stories, including my own. Photography, for me, is freedom. I have always followed where art leads me.

How would you describe yourself?

I am a very closed-off person; I keep to myself, but I am also caring and fun to be around.

What are the main themes that inspire your photography?

Joy, trauma, womanhood, memory, and healing. I see myself as a healer of the soul, and I believe my work helps me navigate the inner world and serves as a compass for where I am going. I believe it is a spiritual gift.

What moment in your career are you most proud of?

I was so excited to be invited to the G20 India in 2023 to represent South Africa and Africa through my photography. It was really a proud moment for me.

What is the biggest challenge you've faced as a photographer?

Not having a camera for almost a year now is one of the major challenges I am currently facing. It has also been very challenging to thrive in my career, and I have not been doing well financially.

What is your primary commercial niche?

Fine art and fashion editorial photography, with a focus on women-centred storytelling, identity, memory, and contemporary African visual culture.

What is your unique technical or visual approach?

Growing up in rural KwaZulu-Natal and being raised by generations of women deeply shaped my visual language. I am drawn to softness, strength, elegance, and quiet emotional moments.

My work often combines natural light, carefully considered composition, and subtle styling to create photographs that feel honest yet timeless.

I approach photography as a process of preservation and reinterpretation. I use portraiture not only to document people but to hold memory, identity, and emotion.

My images are influenced by family archives, magazine imagery, fashion aesthetics, and lived experience, resulting in work that moves between fine art and editorial photography.

Which global brands, photographers, or industries do you feel your work aligns with most?

I believe that my work resonates with brands, photographers, and industries that value emotional storytelling, Black identity, femininity, fashion, memory, and contemporary African visual culture. Artists like Mohau Modisakeng, Wangechi Mutu, Zanele Muholi, and brands like MaXhosa and Thebe Magugu — brands with a cultural narrative.

How's the photography and art space in South Africa?

Durban, specifically where I am currently based (and South Africa more broadly), has a pretty active photography and visual arts scene, but it is uneven, and conceptual photography can definitely feel like it sits on the edge of what gets immediate recognition or commercial traction. 

In Durban, much of the visible “art economy” still leans towards more accessible, commercial, or documentary-style work — events, portraits, weddings, fashion, and tourism imagery. That creates a perception that photography is mainly service-based rather than idea-driven.

So when someone is working conceptually, it can feel like you are speaking a slightly different language than the market around you.

In South Africa as a whole, the photography and contemporary art space has evolved to become more globally connected and conceptually open, but is still unevenly supported locally.

The shift over the past decade or so is real, but it has not removed the structural gaps that make it hard for certain kinds of work, especially conceptual photography, to break through inside the country.