Cape Town has no shortage of photographers. What it has lacked, until now, is a gallery dedicated entirely to showing their work.

We founded Ultraviolet in 2025 to fill that absence. Cape Town's gallery scene is growing and vital, but photography, despite being the most widely practised art form in human history, had no permanent dedicated home within it. We are that home.

We approach photography as something far broader than most people expect. Not only as image, but as object, practice, and medium. Our exhibitions engage with how photographs are made, why they are made, and what they become when they enter the world as physical works. Each show is an invitation to look at photography differently.

We are drawn to photographers who bring technical curiosity and emotional depth to the medium in equal measure, who use it to tell stories, explore ideas, and push at the edges of what photography can be.

Ultraviolet exists, first and foremost, for photographers. There are extraordinary practitioners working across South Africa whose work has very few places to land. We are here to show that work with the seriousness it deserves.

We are also here for collectors, in the fullest sense. For the investment collector building a considered body of work over time, and equally for what we think of as the everyday collector: anyone who recognises the power of a great photograph to transform a space, to hold a feeling, to offer something new each time you stand in front of it.

We welcome visitors to Cape Town seeking work that captures the depth and particularity of this place, not a souvenir, but a work of art made by a local artist. We also work with interior designers, businesses, and brands who need access to a wide, curated network of photographers for private and commercial projects.

We think of Ultraviolet as a centre for photography in Cape Town. A place where the community gathers not only to see work, but to make things happen. We host talks, workshops, and events that bring photographers, collectors, and curious members of the public into conversation with each other and with the medium.

In an era when photographic images are produced at a speed and scale unimaginable a generation ago, we believe more strongly than ever in the experience of encountering a photograph as a physical object. Standing in front of a fine print, made by a specific person, at a specific moment. That experience is what Ultraviolet is built around.

Find us at 70 Shortmarket Street, Cape Town