My current focus on experimental/conceptual photography follows a career of dedication to the visual arts as a writer/art critic on a freelance basis for about 30 years whilst in this period working on the staff of various local magazines and newspapers, after a stint in academia, studying and lecturing in Art History at the University of Johannesburg (formerly known as Rand Afrikaans University) completing an Honours and Masters degree in Art History, after working at the Johannesburg Art Museum, Joubert Park in the 1970s.
Photography arrived as a late passion in my life, when, in my 60s I fell in love with a camera, when, surrounded by desert dunes I peeped through a 70 to 200 mm lens, during a hiking holiday in the Namibian desert. The pen had to make way for the camera, computer, and processing software. Instead of granny duties to my only daughter’s horse and husky children.
Arriving in Cape Town at the southernmost point of Africa, a whole new life evolved through the lens of my camera. Photo workshop holidays, courses, and lectures kept the excitement with a new toy in a new living space growing. Contributing to this change of direction from writing about art, to making art was synchronicity - everything matching and blending with each other.
An email from a stranger offering me a solo exhibition in Cape Town to be in the same year I had planned to move there from Johannesburg, plus learning that the new gallery in my to be new city would be in the same neighborhood only two blocks away from my new home ... that kind of synchronicity! A sign. Not judging what I had considered my "holiday pictures, used to illustrate travel articles, I was overwhelmed. But, once in Cape Town, the thoughts about making conceptual pictures lead me to various courses, and provided a hole new interest. I stopped writing about other image makers' work exhibited in art galleries. And found myself gradually participating in more solo and group exhibitions all over the city. And even at Affordable Art Fair in New York.
Achievements include some international ones. The museum in Bolognia recently selected my image, Cycle of Life for their Exhibition and published it this year 2022 : "In the sun on the moon, edited by Jason Fulford, and and published by the PHMUSEUM!
Prevviously the once online art gallery, Artslant based in New York, regularly selected works of mine as Winner in their Showcases. And Lens Culture repeatedly selected my entries as Editor's Choice.
I was humbled after my year-long study at the Institute of Photography, New York, with their Best Picture Award. a merit award for Best Picture. Subsequently I received the “Fresh Cream” - Best Student Award at the local Vega School of Photography, Cape Town.
The surprising first invite for a Solo exhibition in my new city has sparked this focus on applying myself to photographic studies.
That first solo, in The Waterkant Gallery in Cape Town, sparked this turning point from Writing about .... to Doing, instead. Seeing my pigment prints on archival paper on the walls of a Gallery - landscapes from my favorite places in the world like the deserts of Namibia, Arizona, Zion Canyon, Death Valley, and Cathedral Valley under the exhibition title, The Flow of Stone surely was a super highlight of my life..
Along with exhibiting, I also started a creating artis'ts books of my images. These include The Gift of Walls; Dys-U-Topia - , launched at the
Making this book, Covid-19 The Gift of Walls - Dys-U-Topia, helped me through the brutal hard lockdown in South Africa imposed on us.
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Other titles: Binneste Buite/Inside Out. Artist Book, Woordfees, Stellenbosch; Cliff Richard Lives Here - Fragmentation and Wholeness; Still/Life in Motion - Portrait of Time Passing. Hansa Printers; To Life Dance It - Story in Words Images Movement, in collaboration with Dawn Garisch printed by Orms also in Cape Town. Recently I was invited as co-curator and also a participant in a group show, at the local Gallery One11, Cape Town. A theme a realized when I re-visited my archive, has been a constant since this new love took off in 2010. Exhibition Titled: Nature AS Us. Not any longer Nature AND Us, I conceptualized this last project of which I am uploading pictures now February 9 2023