South African photographer Obie Oberholzer sent us his series The Zebra. He writes :
In a tourist brochure I once read: “Dragon Peaks Mountain Resort is situated in the Champagne Valley, Cathkin Park, and offers a relaxing stay with lovely views” So I went there and found this Zebra grazing with some horses near the landing strip. “Why is this Zebra here?”, I asked at the reception desk. The young girl behind the desk seemed slightly bewildered by the question and said that she would ask the manager. Whilst she searched for the manager, I looked at all the weird landscape paintings of peaks in the hotel reception area. If kitsch was liquid, the floor would have glistened, wet. Then the young receptionist returned and said.” The manager said that the Zebra thinks that it’s a horse”. Right. OK. “And”, I asked again, “Why the red chairs?” Then the pretty young receptionist blushed, and ran off to ask her manager about the red chairs. I looked at more paintings and thanked all the Lords that I was a photographer. Panting slightly, the young girl ran back and said. “The manager said that it’s for people to sit and watch a Zebra that believes it’s a horse”.
I am a searcher and a challenger of the self, a seeker, a conjurer and visual explorer of things and objects, from the small to the big and wide. My purpose lies not in self-praise, but the culmination of interesting and unusual image making, the love of photography that I have devoted a lifetime to. There is never an end to my day, for I sense that even when I sleep, there roams a restless spirit that prowls around in search of all that is dreamlike, graphic, compelling and expressive. As my years stretch, age and crack, my dreams and roads get longer. In the books that I have made, lie the memories of a thousand roads. My photographs are only pages in a traveller’s blog. Perhaps, in all of this lies the purpose of my road trips, my passion. It is the love of photography, following pictorial dreams. “I’m gonna follow that dream wherever that dream may lead me”, as Elvis sang to me in 1961.
Obie Oberholzer
Obie Oberholzer is a South African photographer and author. He was born on a farm north of Pretoria in 1947. He, studied Graphic Design at Stellenbosch University and Photography at the Bavarian State Institute of Photography in München, Germany. Here he later achieved a ‘Master of Photography’ diploma. He lectured in photography at the Natal Technikon from 1975 to 1983. From 1984 to 2002 he was Associate Professor in photography in the Fine Art Dept. at Rhodes University in Makhanda (Grahamstown) in South Africa. Since 1987 he has produced 16 coffee table books on his travels and life in Africa. He has had 37 one-man exhibitions in South Africa and 11 in Europe and is a member of the German picture agency LAIF. He has worked for many international publications and has published 16 coffee table books.
