Hazel Mphande

Hazel Mphande, also known as Hazey Jane (b.1989), is a self-taught photographer based in Pretoria. Hazel’s photography journey began with a profound encounter with a DSLR camera, igniting her passion for self-expression. Seeking to refine her craft, she enrolled in The Market Photo Workshop and completed foundational and intermediate courses in 2014. Continuing her professional development, she pursued an advanced photography course with Through the Lens Collective in Johannesburg for 10 months in 2021.

In 2023, Mphande received further recognition when she was selected to participate in the esteemed New York Portfolio Review, a renowned event organised by the New York Times photo department, Photoville, and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Mphande’s work has been exhibited at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York (2024, 2025) and London (2021, 2023). Her work has also been showcased in various group exhibitions at Berman Contemporary since 2021. Hazel opened a duo photography exhibition with Kamogelo Machaba titled Strand by Strand at Berman Contemporary in 2025.

Hazel Mphande is represented by Berman Contemporary.

In 2012 I was diagnosed with clinical depression. Growing up, speaking about mental illness, in a black and religious home, was completely taboo. As a child, I would experience feeling tired and overwhelmed and I assumed that these feelings would eventually go away, but they didn’t. I continued to experience mental exhaustion well into my adulthood and quite often it affected my work and relationships. I am interested in how we process and cope, when our minds are still trying to grasp our lived experiences, especially when dealing with trauma; how it effects our bodies and, in return, how we see the world.

My work focuses on the way our memories manifest in our consciousness when affected by generational trauma. The effects of trauma identity and the abstract representation of nature is characterised using long shutter speed and double exposure, using blur to create a sense of movement and transition. These photographs embody a temporal impression of fleeting experiences, memory, growth and decay, and begins to mimic the shape-shifting apparitions of recollection and reminiscence of transition.