Lindokuhle Sobekwa has been named Breakout Star of the Year at the GQ Men of the Year 2025 Awards Goodman Gallery proudly celebrates this recognition of an artist whose practice continues to shape contemporary photography on a global stage.
Internationally recognised for his haunting, deeply human photographic storytelling, Sobekwa has carved out a powerful space in contemporary documentary work. His widely acclaimed project “Nyaope” and the intimate series on his sister earned him a place in the Magnum Photos expansion initiative, marking him as one of South Africa’s most important young visual chroniclers. His work is already shaping global conversations about representation, memory and lived experience.
2025 has been a landmark year for Sobekwa:
He was included in ‘New Photography: Lines of Belonging’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York – one of the field’s most influential platforms for emerging photographic voices. (On view through 17 January 2026.)
His recent solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery Cape Town was widely acclaimed, with Zada Hanmer noting in frieze the “understated, melancholic beauty of everyday life” that Sobekwa so powerfully captures.
In May, he was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize – among the world’s most prestigious honours for contemporary photography – for his book ‘I carry Her photo with Me‘ (MACK, 2024).
