Women in the high plateau of Tibet

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Monday, November 7, 2011 | 5 photos

Ten years ago, on a random visit to a bookstore, at the Visual Arts section, a book of black & white photography caught my eyes. On the front cover, it has three words and a picture of a naked black women standing in the middle of a dried lake. It was minimalistic yet so strong and hypnotic that I couldn’t do nothing else than opening it. That book is “AFRICA, Herb Ritts”.

In that book, Herb Ritts has shown a new side of Africa that I haven’t seen. He has made rough life in Africa stunningly sensuous by playing with textures, rawness, blurriness, light and shadows on his subjects. I bought the book and that day, a new passion was born: photography. A few months later with some savings, I bought a second hand 35mm camera and got registered to night classes at a college to learn about the basics of photography.

Traveling is another strong passion in my life. It’s a drug that I’ll never have enough. I always want to visit more places and experience new culture. When I travel,I like to record what I see and each frame is a capture of the moment in time of the environment I photograph. Hence, my pictures have a strong focus on people and the surroundings.

Lastly, by winning this scholarship and the chance to be mentored by a well known professional photographer, not only it represents a dream to any photographer to grow technically and artistically; but to me, it also represents an opportunity to show another side of the wilderness of South Africa which could inspire someone into photography the same way as Herb Ritts has done to me ten years ago.

I thank you for giving me that chance!