The Shades of Kanaan

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Namibia | Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | 5 photos

Pictures of a Bushman family on farm Kanaan in the southwest of Namibia. I am Hermi Strauss, living on farm Kanaan in Namibia. I am absolutely in love with my surroundings and treasure it every day. I live here and try to bring back nature on land that my grandparents bought from a government from the past. They used it to farm and make a living…

The San, or better known as the Bushman people, lived here for thousands of years. In the middle of the last century the Bushman became extinct in our area and about ten years after that my grandparents came to live here.

I had to buy it again and now I use it to make a living from photographers and guests… I also enjoy taking the beautiful area not only into ones and zeros but try to put as much as possible with my own lenses into my heart… I don’t know much about photography but my lenses can see a beautiful picture…

Last year some time we somehow got the privilege to do a photo shoot here on farm Kanaan with some Bushman people from the north east of Namibia.

The contradicting whirlpool of the emotions through the depth of my whole soul was so extreme that I would not dare to try and put it into words…

The long and short of it all is:

Here, they as the rightful owners, stand with no land in their name anymore because of history.

I own it on paper in black and white. But in my heart I don’t own it – it owns me! I just love this precious piece of land.

I don’t think that anyone can deserve to win this competition. It is only destiny.

As a friend of nature I would really love to receive the privilege to this wonderful opportunity to see a little piece more of the wonderful world I live in. An absolute bonus will then be to learn a bit more from light and shadow of this world…