In May 2021 I travelled to the Richtersveld, on South Africa’s north-western border with Namibia. It is a large biodiverse desert, known for it’s unique rocks and epic scenery.

I knew I was headed for days and days of road-tripping through impressive arid landscapes, with many rocks to befriend. I decided to take some of my own rocks with from home, rocks that I’d collected in many other places over the years. I wanted to introduce these rocks, some from the Tankwa Karoo, some from the Drakensberg, to the rocks in the Richtersveld, to see if they would get along. I hoped to make a project out of it, perhaps a photographic project, but I tried a few times and I was never happy with the images that came out. In the end I decided it was enough to have had my own quiet moment in a rocky, shady valley, with my rocks silently speaking, perhaps in a foreign language, to the local rocks of the Richtersveld.

A project that I did achieve in the Richtersveld was to have two exhibitions. I brought with me some print outs, in black and white, of photographs that I’d taken in urban landscapes – in Germany, Georgia, and New York. These places, these faraway cities, felt so completely out of place and nonsensical (as I imagined they would) after having spent a few days immersed in the other-worldiness of the Richtersveld, far away from any human infrastructure or phone signal. I wanted to witness the contrast of these environments for myself, the opposition and tension they presented, perhaps to try and understand why I am so drawn to both.

The first exhibition I put up at sunrise on Glybank. The second was at Kokerboomkloof. The only witness to these exhibitions was my partner at the time.