Margot
Muir

Like Judith Joy Ross, the photographer whose work, among many others, stretches me, influences me profoundly, I have a radical belief in the individual. There is a perfect space between (and within) the potential strength of the collective and the talent, character and thrust of each of us. It seems to me there is an exquisite space between the spectacle of Western individualism and the intelligence of collective humanism and its profound power. The coalescing of the Individual being (and individual presence, voice and affirmation in the world) and ‘I am because of others’. The assumption that Ubuntu necessarily informs an absence of individuality is a distortion, not so? In parallel, I reflect with clarity that we will lose something deep inside of ourselves, if we allow wilderness to be destroyed. 

I refer to W Eugene Smith’s quote “…and each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future – causing them caution and remembrance and realization.” 

My lens seeks to consciously complicate stereotypes. And, at once, questions the status quo. I remain curious, passionate and view doubt as a highly productive quality. And, in acknowledging our human fragility, together with our historical human legacy in the Western world of brutalising master-slave dominance and othering, together with our capacity for wonder, intellectual passion, capacity to love and resiliant clarity, I have a radical belief in the intelligence and sensibility of the natural world and each of humankind.

I am a mature documentary photographer, I am nearly 60, and the work is my lifeblood. My work crystallised under the teaching of Chris Giglio’s Grammar of Photography series at the International Center of Photography, New York. My work has been exhibited and awarded both locally and internationally and is now in the permanent collection of the NMM Art museum. I am a teacher and a scholar, I lectured in Visual Arts at the Nelson Mandela University for 10 years and I will teach again in 2023 in the newly formed non-profit (online) C.A.T. Photography Institute together with nine other founding members; Mandisa Buthelezi, Ashraf Jamal, Tim Hopwood, James Sey, Meg Rickards, Roddy MacInnes, Nick Hauser and Nontsikelelo Veleko (and, in time, if I can finally persuade they, Zanele Muholi).