Jac de Villiers describes himself as being primarily a portrait photographer. His subject matter ranges vastly, from fashion shoots to intimate plant portraits in his studio. He approaches each piece with a rough mental idea and image in mind, noting how the final result can either be meticulously staged or evolve organically depending on the nature of the subject in question. De Villiers is also an accomplished travel photographer, with work appearing in Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, Cosmopolitan, Die Zeit, ELLE, ELLE à table, Food Illustrated, Food & Wine, Food & Home, Harpers & Queen, House & Leisure, National Geographic Traveller, Tatler, Travel & Leisure, Visi, and Wallpaper.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa was first introduced to photography in 2012 while attending Buhlebuzile high school in Thokoza township. Through mentorship from the likes of Bieke Depoorter, Cyprien Clément-Delmas, Thabiso Sekgala, Tjorven Bruyneel, and Kutlwano Moagi, Sobekwa found himself working as a part-time potographer at Live in 2013 . He has since gone on to exhibit work locally, as well as in Iran, Norway, and Paris. Sobekwa lives and works in Thokoza.
Billy Monk was as a bouncer in Cape Town during Apartheid South Africa. His legacy has become the photographs he took of clientele at The Catacombs nightclub between 1967 and 1969. Monk captured scenes of what can be described as the underbelly of Cape Town night life at the time, which offer a scarce perspective of life under apartheid. Supported by Monk’s daughter, Collette Monk, The Billy Monk Collection is the sole custodian of Billy Monk's archive. The Collections aim is to preserve his work so that it may be shared with future generations.
David Southwood is a multi-award-winning photographer whose work can be found in the South African National Gallery, The Finnish Museum of Photography, The Christoph Merian Stiftung, the Constitutional Court of South Africa's collection, The Goethe Institut, and The Spier Art Collection, as well as private collections in South Africa and abroad. Through humour and empathy, Southwood’s personal projects and commissions craftfully tackle questions and problems that are of interest to the artist, such as tensions regarding power and the shifting thereof.
Anja Venter’s creative practice is guided by an interest in areas of intersection between art, culture, and technology. She describes herself as an "Artstronaut", and has created work and visuals across a variety of platforms and disciplines, including commercial work, comics, games, and apps. Her clients have included the likes of Nike, Apple Music, Nedbank, Heineken, and Mr. Price. Venter is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in the Applied Design department .
Strauss Louw is an artist who uses historical and alternative photographic processes to explore ideas surrounding desire, the gaze, the environment, and the importance of surface. Louw has an instinctive approach to image making. Rather than calculating or conjuring a staged image, he instead captures scenes that are resultant of the act of welcoming ideas of desire into his artistic practice. Control, or a sometimes welcomed lack thereof, is also pertinent when considering the medium with which Louw works. One such medium is the 19th century process of salt printing, which Louw uses in a manner that intentionally highlights the inherent visual poetry within the elements of this process: silver, sunlight, and sea salt.
Inge Prins is a commercial photographer, known for her meticulous technical approach and attention to detail. She has worked for various international homeware brands as well as editorial clients, including Monocle, Wallpaper, WSJ, and Forbes. She majored in photography during her Fine Art studies at Rhodes University, and her personal projects have been exhibited locally and internationally. She lives and works in Cape Town.
Sue Williamson is an acclaimed South African artist, known for her works addressing social change and highlighting the role of women within the political struggle against Apartheid. She trained as a printmaker but also works in installation, photography, and video. Williamson’s works feature in numerous local and international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Williamson has also received various awards and fellowships, including the Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship 2011, Italy, Rockefeller Foundation; the Visual Artist Research Award Fellowship 2007, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA; and the Lucas Artists Residency Fellowship 2005, Montalvo Art Center, California, USA. She lives and works in Cape Town.
Gavin Furlonger’s extensive photographic career and portfolio spans over the last 40 years. After arriving in South Africa in 1968, Furlonger spent the majority of the 70’s working for leading agencies, covering fashion shoots and advertising assignments in Cape Town. He later began directing TV commercials in Johannesburg during the 80’s. In response to his increasing awareness of the diminishment of local South African analogue photographic practices and archives, Furlonger started a company named PAPA-SA (Photographic Archival & Preservation Association South Africa). He would also later open Gallery F, as a means to share pertinent and historic South African photography with the local public.
Pippa Hetherington's artistic practice is interested in ideas surrounding family, heritage, trauma, history, and memory. She uses photography and textiles to explore themes of grief, loss, and memory. Hetherington has exhibited in both solo and group shows in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Durban, Gqeberha (South Africa); London (UK); Dublin (Ireland); New York City and Washington, DC (USA). She graduated with an MFA from ICP-Bard, New York in May 2019 and was shortlisted for the Contemporary African Photography Prize in 2021. She is also the co-founder of Behind the Faces, a pan-African women’s storytelling project.
Sujay Sanan is fascinated by the natural world, and uses painting and drawing as a means of showing appreciation for the beauty and frailty of our plant. Sanan graduated with a degree in Graphic Design from the National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad) India, and later went on to co-found Quick Brown Fox. After moving to South Africa in 2013, he began his first body of work as a practicing artist. Sanan has been working on his art exclusively ever since.
Lucie de Moyencourt is a self-taught artist who has also worked as an architect and set designer. Living and working in Cape Town, she is known for the spontaneous manner in which she captures her surrounding environments. Painting with black ink in an instinctive and intuitive fashion, she has prolifically captured scenes of the Atlantic Seaboard and Cape Town's City Bowel. She notes: "I paint because I am addicted to the "surprise" that the painted canvas gives me when I step back from the easel."
Thirza Schaap graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1995, and has been living and working as a photographer between Cape Town and Amsterdam since 2013. Her practice is driven by a deep ecological concern and an aim to raise awareness regarding the atrocities of marine plastic pollution. Her "Plastic Ocean" works combine sculpture and photography to confront the viewer with visually pleasing and organic looking forms that are created using synthetic and unpleasing marine plastic pollution. In this way, Schaaps's works tackle contrasts between the appealing visual nature of her photographs and the disturbing environmental realities they address..
Mariëtte Kotzé has a special interest in how ink-wash painting can be used as a means of alternative photography. By capturing transient moments on paper or a lens surface upon which she mixes various translucent fluids, Kotzé digitally documents ethereal interactions between inks and pigmented substrates. In doing so, she captures images that can never again be created. Her limited-edition fine art prints act as the only physical products of these captured moments, which are oftentimes visually reminiscent of cosmic or underwater scenes, areal views, or even worlds as seen under a microscope.
Katrin Coetzer is a Cape Town-based illustrator with a keen interest in the intricacies of personal geography and ecological co-existence. She primarily creates work using water-based pigments on paper and has worked extensively as a freelance illustrator, creating work for publications such as Vanity Fair and the Wall Street Journal. She exhibited in Paris, Tokyo, Madrid, and Sydney, as well as illustrated five children’s books.