Following the African continent’s portrait tradition, his figures get in place, ready and pose for the photography. This attitude prevents us from feeling like an intruder that is spying their daily life; we are invited to contemplate them with all the dignity that the artist gives them. Just the terrible poverty that surrounds the imagine loses any romantic vision and tells us about a political background. This tension between pride and misery gives to Zwelethu’s art-works a special forcefulness and beauty.

          Brick Worker’s portraits once again are slum workers, but this time the protagonist are women. The artist approaches with respect, the proud glances are still represented in their faces, but on the contrary the men that socially can not show their feelings, these women’s eyes sometimes whisper old stories. Settled in a reddish stone landscape these women maintain a high and stern look to the camera.

Evolving into a more explicit portrait about the poverty and the living conditions of ghettos in South Africa, for the “Contemporary Gladiator series he abandons the shiny inside of the houses, or the intense green of sugarcane in order to focus in a documentary sense, into the portraits of a lives of those on the brink of a social and economic collapse. The real fighters are those kids and, as warriors, Zwelethu approaches to their personalities from the respect, creating iconic characters full of dignity and courage.