South African photography, an art form with a marked interest in the world's social affairs, is winning prizes and generating widespread attention internationally. Earlier this month, three South African photographers - Pieter Hugo, Gideon Mendel and Brent Stirton - were shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, an important international photography prize offering a R1.3-million first prize.A total of 12 international photographers have been nominated for this global award, established in 2008 by the Swiss banking group Pictet to draw attention to photographers highlighting pressing social and environmental challenges.Cape Town-born Stirton, an award-winning photojournalist drawn to cultures and places in extreme transition, has been nominated for his work documenting the battle to safeguard Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Hugo, an internationally celebrated portraitist who in June guest edited the weekend magazine supplement of NRC Handelsblad, a prominent Dutch daily newspaper, has been nominated for his 2009 essay on an electronic waste dump in Ghana. In a 2012 interview, Hugo described his photographs as portals for "a type of ecstatic experience where one looks at the pictures and experiences truth, even if it's not the truth of an accountant".Mendel, who was born in Johannesburg but lives in London, was singled out for his long-term project documenting global warming and flooding.A winner of six World Press Photo Awards, Mendel is an uncle of photographer Mikhael Subotzky.In May Subotzky, together with graphic designer Patrick Waterhouse, won the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, a prominent UK-based international photo prize with a R585000 purse.It is not the first time a South African has won this award. In 2013 Johannesburg-born Adam Broomberg, who works with Oliver Chanarin, born in London to South African parents, won this award for their book War Primer 2, a compendium of news images documenting the "war on terror".There is an often-overlooked thread that connects Broomberg and Chanarin to Hugo and Subotzky: all of them worked for the influential Italian photo magazine Colors in the early 2000s. Their current successes are largely an outcome of the various ways in which they have tested the limits of the documentary tradition.Their influence is also palpable on a new generation of local photographers, including Oliver Kruger. A former studio assistant to Hugo, his fastidiously composed portraits of Johannesburg hipsters will appear in a new book, Golden Youth, from Italian boutique publishing house L'Artiere Editions.Another name to watch is 20-year-old Lindokuhle Sobekwa, whose breakout project, a hard-hitting study of nyaope abuse in Thokoza, will appear in a forthcoming issue of US-magazine franchise Vice. Sobekwa's classically framed black-and-white photographs will be shown alongside a selection of Subotzky's work...