Against the Grain: Photography from South Africa and the United States features photographic works by three generations of photographers – the late Ernest Cole and David Goldblatt, Ruth Motau, Ming Smith and Lindokuhle Sobekwa. The exhibition looks at how each photographer has used the medium to expose, question, and reflect upon their social and political contexts.

From the 1960s to the present, the works convey an explicitly South African narrative while drawing parallels with the United States. From the segregation and disenfranchisement laws of Apartheid to the era emerging from the liberation struggle and US civil rights movement, the exhibition is framed by Black life under those conditions. The photographers were selected for how they resisted these oppressive cultures and went against the grain.