Santa Clara knew this would be her last day alive. She heard it in the bells ringing, clear as new honey, to mark the end of the mid-morning Mass. Es-tu prête? This is the end for you. Do you hear? She barely noticed them anymore, having long grown accustomed to hearing them speak, but never directly to her, never calling her by name.

"I don’t know if you ever heard of a case many years ago about a disappearance that happened on the Wits campus, a missing student called Michaella? She was my flatmate. The suspect in the case was Kuhle. He was the one Michaella was dating and the person who saw her last…"

In Nigeria, faith is shared, seen, and often expressed through clothing. This project explores how clothing and symbolic objects reflect religious identity and belief in Nigeria’s diverse faith communities. Through portraits, it investigates how fashion becomes both a personal expression and a communal language of faith shaping identity, creating belonging, and reinforcing shared convictions. It highlights the tension between fashion and faith, and examines how dress communicates conviction, reverence, and connection to the divine.

What flower could signal the end of one life and the beginning of another? Could he call any of this the beginning of a life? Could he call these past months living? They felt like a dissolving, like a dissolving of the self into this landscape, into this garden where he stood, into the air and the trees and the sky, so that the vital forces of his life may be absorbed by the earth itself and pain may have no substantive place in his heart anymore.

Visule did not wait to be solicited. To collaborate with sitters he approaches them. He lingers with them. His camera often not visible. People would have to wait for him to share that he was a photographer. For most of our time together that morning in Arderne Gardens, Visule carried his cameras inside his bag. I had asked to observe him photograph and join a visit he would make to the Garden.

Visule Kabunda engages the garden as a dynamic site of emotional reflection, mutual care, and decolonial practice in post-apartheid South Africa. Grounded in the gardening practices of Black communities living in South Africa, this work examines how gardening offers important insights into how communities might ethically relate to land, memory, and one another.

I creep into the city at dusk. I have not been here for many years. Years or decades? I cannot tell, but when I see her, I will know how long it has been. Every city carries a distinct feeling like every human carries a unique scent and when I return to Casablanca it feels the same; old grandeur, stale smoke and the sense that everything is changing.

The most outstanding characteristic of Yasmine Hatimi’s photography is its compelling sense of place. Her work highlights Moroccan communities in a manner that is realist and unadorned yet full of tender experiments: shades, gazes, stark architecture. Leaping beyond her previous projects on Moroccan masculinity and culture, her new portfolio of images offers a unique interiority. 

The ruins give way to renewal, to the promise of progress, to the shimmering face of a country in motion. I tell myself not to judge, only to witness. Yet questions echo within me, doubts gather in the silence. I should rejoice at this vision of growth, I should feel pride—but something falters, a dissonant note, a bitter taste I cannot ignore.

“I’m—I’m—here for the same reason as the others,” Lamin Momodu says. He averts his eyes. “We’re all here—to—to play Bubu music at America’s Got Talent. Our music came from the underworld.” He laughs and adjusts his suit, revealing sweat patches under his arms. “Well, that’s according to a historic myth. Centuries ago, someone had a dream, and in that dream, he saw a band like ours, playing horns. He was taught to play Bubu music in the underworld. It would be an honor to share it with the world.”

Kanu’s photographic practice asks: to what end do we make these pictures? The photographer’s proximity to the Temne, as one of them himself, is a powerful corrective gesture. It shifts the project from anthropological claims to collaborative memory-making. A photograph could be, in part, a gift.

This project documents Bubu music and its communities in northern Sierra Leone, capturing the people and everyday moments that keep the tradition alive. Rooted in Abdul Hamid Kanu's Temne heritage, it engages with music as a living practice connecting generations through sound, memory, and belonging.

There are no people in Lidudumalingani’s images, but there are ghosts everywhere. The dead haunt suburban sidewalks, highways, city parks, rivers, bridges, dams, illegal dumpsites, hotel rooms, all where human lives collide. Sites of Mourning is primarily shot in Johannesburg and follows the trail of South African newspaper reports.

By one estimate, South Africa leads in femicide rates, five times higher than the global average. These sombre images are focused on sites where women were either killed or dumped after being killed. Accompanied by ruminative captions by the photographer, Sites of Mourning serves as a monument to the women's lives.

Ada had been travelling on this road for far too long. Six hours must have passed already, and she was still in the tightly packed, overly warm bus. Even then, her excitement was high. Being in the bus that was taking her towards her hometown from the city made her giddy. The plan was to get home and drop her bags, then Cousin Justice would take her to the market to familiarise herself with the women there. After that they would walk around the village a little to see where she could set up a makeshift photo studio.

A small town in Anambra State, southeastern Nigeria, Neni is a neighbouring community to Adazi-Ani, where Amarachi Nnoli’s photography project Anwuli: An Invitation to Joy is staged. For the project, Nnoli moves from home to home, her mobile studio in tow, making portraits of those who have consented to pose.

Amarachi Nnoli blends elements of studio photography to examine Igbo identity in Nigeria. Visiting Adazi-Ani, her paternal hometown in southeastern Nigeria, she uses portraiture to explore not only the image of a person, but as a vessel of culture, memory, and representation.

Tender Visions is a new cross-disciplinary commissioning program for photographers and writers based on the African continent, produced by Tender Photos and supported by funding from the Open Society Foundations. 13 photographers have been commissioned to produce new work within their communities, guided by predefined themes, and in collaboration with 26 writers, who are to write original creative or critical responses to the photographic projects.

In the last three months, Tender Photos has been proud to feature the work of our brilliant editorial fellows. Those features will continue next week. Today, I’d like to share some more about Tender Visions, our new commissioning project. When I launched the Tender Photo newsletter in 2022, my interest was in dialogues between photographers and the meanings and impact of their images.

From July 18 until September 2, you can view the work of these five photographers on a high-resolution QLED monitor at the What is Happening Here gallery in Amsterdam. During the day, the photographs are visible on the monitors, and in the evening, passersby can see them from the street in the windows of the gallery.

This past Wednesday, the first edition of the Editorial Fellowship came to an end. I was immensely pleased with the range of work featured, the perceptive writing of each fellow, and the engagement the photographs generated. I extend my thanks to Onotu David Onimisi, moshood, Zenas Ubere, Sibongakonke Mama, and Sana Ginwalla. 

From the balcony I framed the image from, on the 27th floor of the apartment, I had the view of the park station, and above it, Mandela Bridge, then the trains stretching on, which is in the picture. I was immediately drawn to the different modes of transport. The taxis

The photograph was taken in my hostel on the morning of the day I signed out from University. I had just finished my makeup and wanted to document the look as well as the nostalgic feeling I had. It was the beginning of an end. In the photo, my hair

Since the 1980s I have sidestepped the issue of photographing people… But in Riemvasmaak, Pomfret, Schmidtsdrift, and Platfontein, I was forced to confront my resistance because to avoid photographing people would mean to evacuate them from their homes and their land once again. In these places, people are re-establishing communities