Before she was introduced to photography – via an initiative called Of Soul and Joy, which aimed to expose the students of Buhlebuzile Secondary School to the medium – her interest lay in the field of journalism. Although she has switched from words to images as a means of expression, on one hand she remains true to her original ambition in that she tells stories of people who live near her, documenting the township in which she was born and still lives. On the other hand, she veers away from the mode of documentation, playing with light and focus to create evocative images that Sean O’Toole has described as ‘capable of recognising in the bare facts of human circumstance something close to poetry.’ Her sensitive approach to image-making, and her honest representation of real people, makes Mazibuko a successor to the likes of Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt.