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BIOGRAPHY

Bobson Sukhdeo Mohanlall (b.1928 – 2003) founded Bobson Studio in downtown Durban, South Africa, in 1960, at 54 Cross Street. Convenient to Durban’s transit hub for commuting workers, he attracted a clientele of Zulu speakers, who often posed wearing outfits and beadwork in distinctive regional styles, in uniform, or dressed in ceremonial outfits or Sunday Best. Clients received postcard-sized prints that they could give or mail to friends and relatives. 

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bobson Studio began to offer color portraits, which best captured the vivid dress of the clients. Already famed for his portraits, demand surged. Bobson Studio became especially crowded on weekends, when couples and groups could  meet during time off from work, and clients could spend hours changing outfits and posing for numerous images. For example, wives might come from rural areas to pose alongside their husbands living and working in the city. Bobson Studio was open 8AM-5PM seven days a week, and Mohanlall, assisted by family members, opened Bobson Studio Extension a few blocks away at 1 Victoria Street in 1965.

Bobson Studio’s archive is both one of the first in color in Africa and it forms a vital record of the regional fashions of  the period. Bobson’s clients reflect a mix of local and international, urban style. Such studios became sites of affirmative self representation in the context of the oppressive apartheid era.

Sukhdeo Mohanlall used two cameras during this time, a Yashica Matt 124 G and a Rolliflex 120mm. Negatives were retained on site. Black-and-white images were printed at the studio, while color film was sent out to Durban’s sole lab that could process and print it. Chemical and temperature fluctuations at this overworked lab affected the consistency of its color results. In later years, advanced scanning and color correction made it possible to rectify the variations on Mohanlall’s 6 x 6 cm negatives and output higher quality prints.  This process began during the 1990s, as Bobson Studio gained broader recognition with art and photography circles in Durban, then within South Africa, and internationally.

Tragically, in 2003 Sukhdeo Mohanlall was murdered at his studio by petty thieves and the Bobson Studio closed. Unfortunately, Mohanlall’s client files were stored in a location vulnerable to flooding and were lost, otherwise it would have been possible to identify the individuals in his portraits.

Axis Gallery has represented and exhibited the Bobson Studio archive since 2000, and is the sole representative of the estate. 

Bobson Sukhdeo Mohanlall’s photographs have been exhibited internationally. Museum exhibitions and catalogs include: “Dark Room: South African Photography and New Media 1950-Present,” Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA, and Birmingham Museum of Art;  “The Other Camera,” University of Michigan Institute for Humanities Gallery, Anne Arbor, MI (2014); “Contemporary Art/South Africa,” Yale University Art Gallery (2014); and “Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion & Identity,” at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2019); “Uluso—Against the Dark Night Sky,” Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 2024.

Mohanlall’s work is in several private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, USA, and The Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove, United Kingdom. 

CV