PLATFORM 2020 × Through the Lens Collective
POINT ZERO.
An 8-month photography studio for women photographers across Africa & SWANA
We’re inviting women photographers across Africa and SWANA to build a body of work inspired by Nawal El Saadawi’s searing novel, Woman at Point Zero. Not as a tribute, but a spark. A permission slip. A refusal.
This programme is for photographers who are done asking politely. For those making images that confront the systems that shape women’s lives: patriarchy, colonial residue, state violence, religious policing, family silences, “honour”, economics, the surveillance of bodies, the price of survival. For those who want their work to carry both beauty and bite. Tenderness and teeth.
“They said, ‘You are a savage and dangerous woman.’ I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.”
“A new world was opening up in front of my eyes…”
Saadawi’s writing doesn’t decorate reality, it exposes it. It names the structures that profit from women’s fear and the private spaces where power hides. This programme asks: what does it look like to translate that clarity into photographs? Not performative empowerment, but authored, embodied, politically awake work.
Applications closed.
Why Nawal El Saadawi
“I want nothing. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. Therefore I am free.”
Nawal El Saadawi (1931-2021) was an Egyptian feminist writer and physician who spent her life naming what power tries to hide. She wrote like a blade: not to comfort, but to reveal. Woman at Point Zero is her groundbreaking novel based on the real life testimony of a woman imprisoned in Egypt - inside a system designed to break her. It’s a story about violence, survival and the cost of truth. It’s not a gentle book. It’s a clarifying one. And we’re using it as a provocation: what becomes possible when you stop asking for permission?
What you’ll make
A photo project (new or in-progress) that takes Woman at Point Zero as a starting point and a guiding force. Think of it as a line, a rupture, a question that builds outward into your own context: your home, your history, your community, your archive, your daily life, your resistance. Work made from what you know, what you’ve lived, what you’ve witnessed.
We welcome documentary, diaristic, staged, archival, experimental, poetic work as long as it is authored.
What we’re calling in
Work that refuses the tidy frame. Work that doesn’t sweeten itself for institutions, funders, audiences or the gaze.
We’re drawn to projects that can hold complexity without blinking. Experiences carried through images that express rage and softness, pleasure and grief, contradiction and truth… and still stay precise.
A Studio rhythm, made by women for women
Led by Laura El-Tantawy (PLATFORM 2020) and Michelle Loukidis (Through the Lens Collective). Two women, two ends of the continent - North Africa and South Africa - bringing our communities into the same room. We’ve spent decades making work, mentoring photographers and building creative spaces rooted in empathy, rigour, care and truth-telling. This collaboration feels both natural and necessary: a studio shaped by women who understand the stakes and the possibilities.
“She no longer fears anything, for everything which can hurt her, she has already undergone.”
Who the programme is for
Women photographers across Africa and SWANA (based there, from there or deeply connected) who want a serious studio container: committed, protective, politically awake and held by other women who understand what it takes.
If you’re carrying a project that needs a stronger spine, a sharper ethic and a steadier rhythm, this is for you.
POINT ZERO Selected Artists
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Leila Abdellani
ALGERIA
Leila Abdellani is a 25-year-old architect and photographer from Algiers. She first picked up her father’s compact camera at 17, with what she describes as a scattered yet curious gaze. Over time, what began as an absent-minded practice became a tool for making sense of her surroundings, shaped by the dense urban landscape she grew up in. Her work has so far centred on the complexities and sensitivities of the built environment, but her focus is now shifting inward towards selfhood, memory, and the dynamics of perceiving and being perceived. -
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Meha Desai
MAURITIUS
Meha Desai is a photographer and visual artist based in Mauritius whose practice moves through archives, memory and documentation. Working between images, materials and lived realities, she explores what is preserved, overlooked, or left unrecorded and who gets to tell the story. Her work treats images not as fixed records, but as spaces to question, rework and reimagine. She collaborates with institutions to shape documentation that holds, with care, the people and places the mainstream record tends to forget. This approach also informs her role as co-founder of Resort, a collective of artists and researchers working through collaborative, care-based and decolonial cultural practice. -
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Hala Hisham
EGYPT
Hala Hisham is an Egyptian artist and storyteller whose work combines documentary photography, design and visual research. She explores narratives rooted in isolation, cultural erosion and womanhood. -
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Neemo Mungai
KENYA
Neemo Mungai is a horticulturist and photographer based in Kenya. Through visual storytelling, she aims to cultivate empathy and open meaningful dialogue around our shared human experience. -
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D. M. Terblanche
SOUTH AFRICA
D. M. Terblanche (b. 1998, Pretoria, South Africa) is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist working in photography. Their practice centres narrative documentary and portraiture, moving between personal and constructed realities. Beginning with cellphone self-portraits, they developed a preference for analogue processes, using portraiture as an intimate space for self-reflection and confronting the past.
Studio Rhythm
This is a held, rigorous container. A monthly rhythm of critique, 1–2–1 support and peer pods that keeps you accountable to the work. It culminates in a digital zine and online showcase, with midpoint and final talks to bring the projects into the world.
Sessions are held online. Selected participants will receive the full calendar and time zones in advance. Expect around 3–5 hours a month live, plus self-directed making between sessions.
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Every month includes:
Group session: live critique, prompts, practical next steps (Laura & Michelle)
Monthly 1–2–1: one month with Michelle, the next with Laura
Virtual peer-to-peer breakout sessions: small pods for accountability, solidarity and honest feedback between the main sessions
Plus two public moments:
Mid-programme online talk (moderated by Michelle & Laura): Q&A with participants and spotlight on works-in-progress
Final online talk (moderated by Michelle & Laura): a closing showcase with participants presenting final work
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A refined edit and clear project spine
A collective digital zine featuring participant work
A curated online showcase on PLATFORM 2020 and Through the Lens Collective websites
Visibility and context through the midpoint and final talks
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A sliding scale that keeps it accessible while honouring artistic direction, curation and production:
$150: Solidarity rate
$200: Standard rate
$300: Sustainer rate (supports solidarity places & zine/showcase production)
“My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel and my bite deadly.”
How to apply
Short proposal: Tell us what you want to make & how El Saadawi’s influence is guiding your approach
10-20 images OR a clear starting point if early-stage
Short bio and link to your work
Bring us work that tells your truth, “savage and dangerous” as it may be. We’ll select for clarity of intent, courage, depth and voice. Work that feels like it could only be made by you.
Applications closed.
All quotes used are from Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero.
Your Questions, Answered
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POINT ZERO is an eight-month photography studio for women photographers across Africa and SWANA, inspired by Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero. It’s a structured container with monthly group critique, alternating 1–2–1 mentoring with Laura and Michelle, peer breakout sessions and two public talks, culminating in a collective digital zine and online showcase.
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TTL Collective is a women-led photographic learning space founded in Johannesburg by South African visual artist and educator Michelle Loukidis. Rooted in the African continent, TTL supports photographers to strengthen personal vision, critical thinking and professional practice, refining visual language and narrative craft while building sustainable structures for contemporary photographic work.
About Michelle Loukidis
Michelle Loukidis is a South African photographer and educator based in Johannesburg. Trained at TUT in Tshwane, she spent over a decade working commercially before dedicating the past 20+ years to mentoring and developing photographers from across Africa. She founded Through the Lens Collective in 2018 and exhibits her work in solo and group shows. She often works with medium-format film, drawn to the discipline and quiet magic of the process.
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POINT ZERO is intentionally focused on women because Woman at Point Zero centres women’s lived realities, and this studio is designed as a women-held container: protective, politically awake and specific. At this stage, the programme is for women photographers. We recognise gender is complex, but the focus here is deliberate: a space shaped around women’s experiences and safety. (If you’re unsure whether you fit this call, you’re welcome to email us.)
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No, you don’t. What matters most is your intent: how Saadawi’s themes - power, survival, truth-telling, refusal, are sparking your project. If selected, the book will become a shared reference point as we move through the programme together.
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We welcome documentary, diaristic, staged, archival, experimental and poetic approaches, as long as the work is authored and ethically grounded. You’ll leave with a stronger project spine: clearer intent, a refined edit and sequence and a public outcome: a digital zine feature, an online showcase and visibility through the midpoint and final talks.