From the introduction text:

"In 1986, the Standard Bank National Arts Festival Committee introduced a new component to the Fine Arts programme: a biennial Guest Artist award. The concept is that the award should provide for an exhibition in recognition of an artist's creative excellence and dedication to a life-long career in the visual arts. The successes of the past three awards have been considerable. Many people have been made aware of the extent, importance, and contribution that these Standard artists have made to South African art. This programme is also, in a sense, a Standard Bank attempt to redress parochial thinking and historical omission.

Neville Dubow was selected for several reasons. Over almost 30 years, he has contributed to literature on the visual arts; he has played an important role as an art historian and art critic in Cape Town, and as an academic has been the Director of the Michaelis School of Fine Art for almost two decades. Despite these considerable commitments, he has also emerged as one of South Africa's finest artists working in the medium of photography. Photography is a powerful documentary medium, particularly in light of many years of major political upheavals and injustices. But the seriousness of these social conditions has resulted in little attention being given to the conceptual use of the medium in contemporary South African art. This is certainly not the case abroad, where the photograph has often supplanted the performance and the video, or has been an instrument for conveying ideas in its own right. It has until now indeed been rare to have had the opportunity of seeing one artist's photographic work which spans two decades. We see it as one of the Festival's duties to redress such omissions..."