Santu Mofokeng

Over the course of a few weeks in 1986, aboard the crowdedand precarious Soweto-Johannesburg train he took to andfrom his job as a darkroom printer, Santu Mofokeng photographeda ritual he witnessed daily. His fellow commuters, working-class residents from the surrounding townships, would spontaneously begin to sing. Bible-wielding preachers would sermonize, prayers would be uttered, and murmurs would gradually build into a raucous chorus replete with clapping, bell-ringing, dancing, and improvised drums. "These pictures capture two of the most signifi cant featuresof South African life," Mofokeng says, "the experience of commuting (migrancy) and the pervasiveness of spirituality."The first of a defining series of photo-essays by Mofokeng thatSteidl will release in the coming years, Train Church is thephotographer's earliest long-form story-newly revised andexpanded, and brought palpably to life in an oversize format.