Jo Ractliffe was born in 1961 in Cape Town and lives in Johannesburg. She obtained her MFA degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 1988 and has exhibited extensively in South Africa and internationally since then. Her Luanda series, Terreno Ocupado, was exhibited at the Warren Siebrits Gallery, Johannesburg, in 2008; selected images were also shown at the seventh Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2008). Other group exhibitions include Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity, Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm/Burlafingen, Southern Germany (2010); This is Our Time, Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg (2010); Snap Judgements: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, International Centre for Photography, New York (2006), and The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society, Second International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Biacs 2), Seville, Spain (2006). She is currently a Writing Fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser), Johannesburg.