Cecil Sols worked as a freelance photographer with a collective of social documentary photographers in the 1980s to early 1990s, helping to expose the atrocities of apartheid and to empower young black South Africans through media training.
In 1983 he joined Afrapix and set about to help establish a branch of Afrapix as well as a training workshop in Soweto. He collaborated with the Afrapix collective and Dynamic Images, which provided photographic and video training ‘to serve underprivileged and oppressed people’. In July of 1986, Cecil Sols together with Vuyi Mbalo ran the Soweto branch of Afrapix for a short period. The same year, Cecil Sols and Vuyi Mbalo left Afrapix and set up Photographers for Social Documentation (Photosdoc) in Soweto.
Sols was attracted to social documentary photography as an important tool to bridge the social gap between communities in South Africa.
Works featured in group exhibitions:
Taking Sides - Conflict In South Africa, 1984-1986
Between States of Emergency, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), Bird Street Art Gallery, 2017
Nelsonmandela.org. (2019). Between States of Emergency. [online] Available at: https://www.nelsonmandela.org/uploads/files/VisitorsGuideWeb.pdf [Accessed 10 Sep. 2019].