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African landscapes by Alexander Lindsay, descendent of Lady Anne Barnard on view in her former Cape home

2 Apr 2019

Alexander Lindsay creates monumental landscape photographs of extraordinary honesty, clarity and beauty. He has developed his own techniques to capture and print, in minute detail and on an epic scale, wilderness regions of the world at and beyond the edges of human influence. He pushes photographic processes and technology to extreme levels, eschewing all forms of digital manipulation or artifice. His photographic art process is as ‘pure’ as he can make it, reflecting the unsentimental, raw essence of his environments.

In 2017 Lindsay, a descendent of Lady Anne Barnard, spent seven months in southern Africa photographing in Namibia, South Africa and Lesotho. His trip coincided with an intense drought that gripped the region. Lindsay’s photography reflects the cruelty or gift of rainfall, and includes depictions of the dying quiver tree forests of Namibia and the life-affirming thunderous waterfalls and awe-inspiring green expanses of the Lesotho highlands. 

Lindsay’s southern African travels followed those of Lady Anne Barnard (née Lindsay), who arrived in Cape Town in 1797 as the wife of the British colonial secretary. This enterprising woman immediately fell in love with the region and its people. Encouraged by Sir John Barrow, an English explorer and writer who spent time in South Africa, Lady Anne conducted a series of long expeditions in the Western Cape, recording her experiences in journals and watercolour paintings. Her records show a fascination with and admiration for all she encountered, and her watercolours are some of the most beautiful early records of the towns, countryside and inhabitants of South Africa.

The exhibition of Lindsay’s work at The Vineyard has an added poignancy. During her time in Cape Town, Lady Anne built and lived in the house that has now become The Vineyard.

Lindsay grew up in the same house in Scotland as Lady Anne, where her paintings and writings provided seeds of inspiration for his lifelong passion for extreme travel, filming and photography. For the past 35 years, Alexander has brought his film and stills cameras to some of the most extreme situations and environments on the planet.

His earliest experiences living with and photographing the Maasai tribe in Tanzania led him to documentary filmmaking. Lindsay made war documentaries over a five-year period in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, immersing himself in both sides of the conflict. He then filmed in Iraq during the First Gulf War (subsequently returning to Iraq for the Second Gulf War in 2004). This was followed by five years of pioneering documentary filming and photography of the wreck of the Titanic, 4 km below sea level, at one point even entering the wreck itself in a submersible.

These varied documentary experiences ultimately led Lindsay to his freest artistic expression as a photographer of our imperiled natural world. Lindsay has always sought to immerse himself in situations where, he explains, “the imagination is rendered unnecessary”. This concept links all his projects.

Following his extensive background as a war cameraman and deep-sea filmmaker, Lindsay’s latest African photographs, on view at the Vineyard Hotel, seduce with their beauty and detail. But behind these seductive images the very antithesis is laid out in huge and savage focus, Lindsay’s photographs bearing artistic witness to the fragility and rarity of what remains of our untouched world.

Lindsay’s work has been exhibited internationally, and his photographs are included in major private and corporate collections around the world. He also works on specific commissions for corporate and private clients.

The photographer will be available for private tours of the exhibition. This extensive exhibition presents limited edition photographs ranging in size from 1 m to 5 m wide. All works will be for sale.

Sales Enquiries:

Sophie Camu

sophie.camu@camuart.com

+27 (0) 790 430 206 until 7^th May

+44 7940 151 381 thereafter

Alexander Lindsay:

alexlindsay1@me.com     

+27 (0) 661 396 955 until 7^th May

+44 7812 169 415 thereafter

www.alexander-lindsay.com