Josie Borain is widely recognised as one of South Africa’s first global supermodels and a defining cultural figure of the 1980s. Less widely understood is the seriousness and depth of the photographic practice she developed during those same years. 

PRETTY BOY marks her first major solo photography exhibition - a landmark moment that brings into focus a body of work produced between 1983 and 1989, while she was living and working in New York.

Drawn from an extensive archive of thousands of negatives, the exhibition presents a tightly curated selection of reportage photographs and intimate cultural portraits that stand firmly on their own artistic merit. Gritty, precise, and psychologically alert, the images capture the tension and creative charge of New York City in the 1980s.