‘In

South

Africa,

you

hear

of

disappearance

all

the

time’:

one

photographer’s

search

for

his

sister’s

missing

years

In Sobekwa’s new book, 'I Carry Her Photo With Me', there is a black and white portrait of his mother, Nomasindiso, reading this Bible in bed, her finger slowly tracing a line. It is, he agrees, an incredibly intimate picture, but it also speaks to the culture of South Africa’s townships where electricity is patchy, if available at all. “Looking at stuff at night by candlelight does something in terms of the detail you see,” he says. “It is hard to distract my mother when she is reading.” His book is first and foremost about his sister, and in it, he traces her footsteps, gathering up the scant things she left behind, and talking to those who knew her: as he puts it, it comprises a series of absences that form “a kind of map” on the page, and in this sense, it’s intensely personal.