The Goethe-Institut Johannesburg and Simon Njami initiated the Photographer’s Master Class in 2008 as a forum for emerging African photographers to meet with curators from the continent and further afield.

The workshop as a closed portfolio reading has been taking place annually since and is structured to privilege a peer review process and informal master class, with time dedicated also to individual portfolio review.

In 2014 Akinbode Akinbiyi, Frédérique Chapuis, John Fleetwood, Simon Njami and Katrin Peters-Klaphake participated as mentors with twelve photographers from Cameroon, DRC, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda. This long-term project is designed to encourage professional engagement between curators and photographers, enable networking across the region and encourage critical discourse around photography as practice. The workshop is always set to coincide with a major art or photography event on the continent, which provides a further framework for engagement and exposure. In 2014 it coincided with the Joburg Art Fair.