Resistance photography came to disrupt this consensually validated rhetorical construction, by presenting the humanity of non-white racial groups in ways that contravene the racist ideologies of the apartheid state.
[3] Photography in contemporary South Africa has developed into a lively and burgeoning cultural movement, which, since 1994, has exploded into a democratised and accessible form of artistic expression.
The weight of its apartheid past no doubt heavily influences its present, and the legacy of resistance photography has transformed into an abiding focus on the ongoing social issues faced by the new South Africa.
Popular themes include HIV/Aids, racism and social inequality, the democratic transition, and persistent injustices of post-apartheid South Africa.
Anthropologist Johannes Fabian suggests that in the African context, such pop cultural expressions represent ‘moments of freedoms’, allowing for the conceptualisation and cultivation of alternative modes of being, that liberate the individual, albeit in fleeting, contestatory and conflictual spaces.
[5] Much South African photography such as Williams’ work, embodies Fabian's notion of ‘moments of freedom’, depicting lives both limited, but not completely contained by the harsh realities of life.