ABOUT AJAY

Ajay Lalu is a Cape Town based fine art and documentary photographer whose work explores belonging, cultural memory, and human connection within South African communities. Working across documentary, street, and analogue photography, his practice is rooted in trust, proximity, and long-form immersive storytelling.

His work focuses on communities often represented through stereotype or spectacle, creating images grounded instead in dignity, tenderness, and recognition. Lalu’s photography has been exhibited in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Italy, Scotland, and the United States, including exhibitions with Ultraviolet Gallery, LumiNoir Art London, Glasgow Street Photography Gallery, and Trinsic Art Gallery Baltimore.

His ongoing body of work, A Mountain Divides, documents the Kaapse Klopse tradition and broader cultural life of Cape Town through themes of belonging, inheritance, resilience, and performance. The project later evolved into a published photographic book featuring a foreword by renowned South African photographer and archivist Gavin Furlonger.

Alongside his artistic practice, Lalu is involved in photography based social impact initiatives including Shoot4Purpose, a women focused street photography programme centred on healing, empowerment, and storytelling through photography.