Jo Ractliffe
Studio visit with Jo Ractliffe

13 February 2026
Aperture

Lucienne Bestall visits Jo Ractliffe's studio in the coastal town of Fishoek, to talk about her decades of making and current retrospective at Jeu de Paume, Paris.

Blind Magazine, 31 January 2026

'Jo Ractliffe sought something else: not to photograph the event in its immediacy, but what follows it' writes Guénola Pellen on the occassion of the artist's retrospective at the Jeu de Paume.

British Journal of Photography , 6 August 2021

'Jo Ractliffe’s documentation of apartheid was distinct': Hannah Abel-Hirsch speaks to the photographer about her formative experiences and the major shifts and key motifs in her work

Photo-Eye Blog, July 2021

'I not only see, but feel, the grain of the image, the rough ridge of each blade of grass glinting in the sun, and every pebble on a dirt road; I wonder if this is what it feels like to read in Braille', writes InHae Yap, looking at the tactility and conceptual gravitas of Photographs 1980s - now by Jo Ractliffe

Port Magazine, June 2021

'In this publication, you’ll find a mix of prose, impactful imagery and in-depth, personal cadences written by Jo that detail the reasoning behind her credited works,' writes Ayla Angelos, delving into Ractliffe's first comprehensive monograph of works made over 35 years

Musée Magazine, June 2021

Trevor Bishai reviews Jo Ractliffe's retrospective at The Art Institute of Chicago, DRIVES. He concludes, 'rather than existing as stagnant records of history, Ractliffe’s images are boundless windows into our own grasp of both the past and the present'

Collector Daily, June 2021

Olga Yatskevich looks at the pairing of Ractliffe's photography with an allegorical short story by Zadie Smith in Two Men Arrive in a Village, writing, 'both artists offer commentary on violent legacies, destruction, and the imbalances of power, and do so using imagination and allegories'

Wallpaper Magazine, December 2020

'Photographer Jo Ractliffe on expanding the frame of South African documentary': Harriet Lloyd-Smith interviews Ractliffe on 'the complexities of portrait photography, her influences, and using the landscape not as a subject, but as a medium'.

Cuartoscuro, December 2020

‘Jo Ractliffe, Violencia, Conflicto Y Memoria’: Interview with Daniel Brena (Article in Spanish)

Forbes, October 2020

'Jo Ractliffe Brings Her Quiet Language Of Desolation To The Art Institute Of Chicago': Brienne Walsh looks at the timeliness and timelessness of Ractliffe's work on the occasion of DRIVES

The Guardian, June 2016

'Jo Ractliffe's best photograph: the ghosts of Angola's civil war': Interview with Nell Frizzell

Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, November 2015

'Where Do the Myths Lie: Considering the Imaginary in Jo Ractliffe's Landscapes of Conflict' by Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi - a feature responding to Ractliffe's solo exhibition The Aftermath of Conflict at New York's Metropolitan Museum

The Wall Street Journal, October 2014

'After the War at Home': Review of Someone Else’s Country, Photographs by Jo Ractliffe at the Peabody Essex Museum

BOMB Magazine, September 2011

Kathleen MacQueen interviews Jo Ractliffe about As Terras do Fim do Mundo 'as an imaginative space that creates its own language' for 'Shifting Connections', a series of conversations with artists

New York Times, May 2011

Holland Cotter reviews Jo Ractliffe's As Terras do Fim do Mundo, the inaugural exhibition at The Walther Collection Project Space in New York

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