• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Struik Publishers (January 1, 1900)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1868252086
• ISBN-13: 978-1868252084
Jus I thought, but I love this great Southland. A strange land. There’s a beat that runs through her body; sometimes, if you listen carefully, you can hear the spirits of the Abadala. ‘Yes’, I said to the night. ‘You Africa, my friend, you happysadland, hug me and keep me, for I could never live in Brussels . . .’
Obie Oberholzer began this, his third major photographic odyssey in Grahamstown on February 18th, 1991 treading the well-worn tourist paths until he got to the famous Cango Caves. Here he stood in a tourist group, next to a little man who wore sandals and socks, listening to the drone of a guide who said everything twice (in both official languages) and then played organ music. At that point he knew: no more tourist areas, finish and klaar. So he patted his hipflask, hitched his camera, climbed aboard his Volksie bus and headed west into the sunset and the great open spaces of southern Africa, finally reaching Meob Bay, to hell and gone up the Skeleton Coast, one of the most isolated places on the African subcontinent. He returned four months and 20000 kilometres later with images that delight the eye and stir the heart.*
Here, in this fine gallery, are some of the remoter places and less conventional faces of southern Africa, captured on film by a photographer of insight and endearingly eccentric humour.
*Obie Oberholzer’s first two journeys were recorded in Ariesfontein to Zuurfontein (1988) and Southern Circle
(1989).