This exhibition, which showcases work made by seventeen artists since the year 2000, documents the latest movements in South Africa’s vibrant photographic tradition. Curators Tamar Garb and Martin Barnes focus on documentary and portrait photography, genres in which recent developments have been marked by an ongoing commitment to the discussion of local identity politics and a willingness to appropriate ideas and forms circulating in the global art market. Beulahs by Zanele Muholi, a project that turns the spotlight on young gay men who defy gender norms by adopting (female) elements of Zulu dress, exemplifies the new state of affairs. These images of the Beulah community – three-quarter length colour portraits of figures who stare aggressively at the camera – embrace a vocabulary now ubiquitous within Western commercial galleries.

Perhaps the most noticeable change in the latest phase of South African photography is a preference for enormous prints, a shift facilitated by digital imaging. Pieter Hugo uses this new technology to create high-resolution documentary photographs, which are often shocking in subject matter. The astonishing detail in his portrait of Yaw Francis, a worker on a Ghanaian waste dump for discarded electronic products, makes apparent the white wires of an MP3 player worn by the subject. In the background, visible through swirling toxic smoke, the silhouette of a woman carrying a basket introduces an uncomfortable reminder of the human costs that such devices – still mainly consumed by the rich – ultimately exact.

The works on display reveal the difficulty of defining national artistic cultures in an increasingly interconnected world. Yet for all the images’ insinuation of compromise, the exhibition leaves hanging the idea that the alignment of these photographers with wider trends in the medium has weakened their ability to engage with their own history and politics.

Until Jul 17

TOM BALFE