As if rising from the ashes, and just when everyone thought the cash was gone we now have a new Month of Photography upon us. This fourth incarnation sees the triennial festival initiated by Geoffrey Grundlingh taken over by the busy Jenny Altschuler who has seemingly miraculously done the impossible and brought the festival back from the dead.

Now Sannie Prinkle is no fan of photography - after all when did it become art anyway? - but I decided to take a turn at the well-attended opening at the Castle last Thursday. It was bitterly cold and the snacks were in a totally different space to the exhibition and worse yet infected by millions of hungry students and aanhangers. Anyway, there were three shows on exhibition. First up was Then And Now, curated by Paul Weinberg, showing a selection of work by former members of the politically conscious Afripix group, before and after the fall of Apartheid. This was not too bad, actually even good, showing work by the experts of the genre, including sweet old David Goldblatt and less sweet young Guy Tillim and many others of the same ilk. Go and see it and see how much we have not moved away from the trauma of Apartheid. (I was in exile at the time and know nothing of it.)

Then there was Emergence and Emergency curated by Ms Altschuler. Well yes, what can I say? It seems to be a long room filled with lots of work by her students and other young people I do not know and hope not to meet. Maybe they were the ones eating all the snacks. Poor dears, they probably were famished after taking all those snaps.

Finally there was Construct, curated by Heidi Erdmann, and actually this one was quite good. I particularly liked Dale Yudelman's cellphone video work, showing the kind of footage people take with their now ubiquitous cell cameras of a crash scene on a road. Dale's great when he's great.

There was also a very tedious opening speech by Andrew Lamprecht but no one seemed to be listening to his inane pseudo-academic mumbo-jumbo in the cold and dark.

Anyway, MoP4 is on and if you are in Cape Town and like photography check it out. Like all MoPs it's probably going to be a bit hit and miss but hats off to Jenny for doing this. Now when are we going to see an art month in this town?

MOP's Website