I can feel the scrunch of sand under my feet, I can smell the mist coming over the sea, it feels like I can reach out and touch the cow lying in all serenity and trust on the beach right in front of me. I am lost for words, as I gaze into this work of art that is profoundly real, visceral even.

Never has the expression a picture paints a thousand words been truer than in the work of celebrated South African photographic artist Daniel Naudé. On February 8, a solo exhibition SEEING IS BELIEVING Glancing Back opened at Knysna Fine Art. It’s an important collection of his most defining photographs spanning the years 2008 to 2019.

Naudé gave guests a thrill at the opening as he came to Knysna to narrate his work.

These photos traverse and evoke landscapes and narratives from South Africa to Uganda and Australia and this exhibition is a culmination of six bodies of work; Africanis dogs, Animal Farm, Sightings of the Sacred: Uganda first Chapter, Cattle of the Ages with the input of President Cyril Ramaphosa and The Bovine Prophecy which portrays Xhosa cattle on the shore.

One photo dominates a prominent wall in the solo space of Knysna Fine Art. It’s a huge piece, a photograph of a Satin Bower bird’s bower that Naudé photographed in the rainforests of Australia in 2014. Captured here is the bird’s burrow which he builds to court the female. There are bright blue objects surrounding the mating place from bottle caps, to a toothbrush, a piece of Lego, a plastic medicine spoon, a tiny toy dinosaur, a pen, a hairband, you name it… anything blue. The blue against the earth colours is so vivid, so dramatic, that it looks as though the colours were manipulated, the image tampered with. Naudé assures me this image is absolutely true to life, captured exactly as the colours were when he photographed it. This piece is mesmeric, it’s sublime, a word I never use lightly.

This same work hangs in Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia.

A guest asked Naudé what this bird did before there was blue human junk to collect… and he replied: “They collect blue flowers and place them around the bower. The birds also eat blue-berries and then paints the inside of the bower.”

In the Xhosa cattle at the Ndebele River Mouth landscape photo, Naudé captures the cow spoor on the beach, the cows milling around peacefully, the colour of the sea and the sky. Of course, it took Naudé weeks to get this perfect lighting and superb composition.

For the  Flowering Krantz Aloe photo and the  quintessential background, Naudé had to wait for the sky to turn that perfect pink to illuminate the aloe’s flowers. The Xhosa Kraal near Ncata in the Eastern Cape is another example of what goes into these photos:  Naudé  had the photograph composed in his mind then waited patiently in his bakkie looking through the viewfinder of his camera. He saw a cloud slowly moving inside the frame and he waited just until the moment that cloud was just above the kraal to take photos.

When it comes to shooting animals, it takes time to get that perfect shot because they don’t pose. In one of his photos of a Xhosa cow on the shore of the Kei River, Naudé explains: “The legs of the animal are lined up, the ears cocked, the eyes looking right at me, and the wind blowing its tail give the effect of sound and movement.”

His work has been collected by the likes of J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam and his masterpieces live in private collections such as Paul Allen the Co-founder of Microsoft. Naudé has photographed the Oppenheimer’s horses, Stephan Welz’s Tuli cattle and Ramaphosa’s Ankole cattle.

He has had high-profile exhibitions in South Africa, London, Amsterdam, Italy to the Middle East and even Helsinki. In 2020 Naudé was nominated by American fine art photographer and Guggenheim Fellow Greg Miller – and he won the first place in the Life Framers’s Youthhood category.

Naudé has just turned 40. He was born in Cape Town and graduated with a BA Visual Arts Honours Degree from the University of Stellenbosch in 2007 where he still lives.

Photography was the artistic medium that felt right for Naudé from the outset and animals his subjects.  “Animals are unpretentious, they don’t pose, they merely exist. It is important to approach the landscape and animal with an open mind. I always try to find that perfect balance between mindfulness and abandonment that comes from being in nature,” he says.

Naudé first found inspiration in the ancient breed of wild Africanis dogs during a road trip through the South African desert in 2006 and since then he has captured them in regal portraits.

While the dogs appear staged, the images are actually the result of patience, careful timing, and digital techniques, which the artist uses to highlight an uneasy moment of human-animal interaction. At times he slept in his car waiting for his moment to photograph a dog.

The Africanis dog project, which put him on the map, took him four years to get 18 portraits. Because  photography was not digital yet, he would come home from long trips and not even know what images he had captured because the film had yet to be developed.

“These dogs run wild, then I need to get close enough to them to photograph and I need to build that trust so when their eyes meet mine, I can capture the animal’s expression,” Naudé explains. None of this happens in the click of a shutter.

Since his early photographs of dogs, the artist has continued to explore the South African countryside, capturing animals, both domesticated and wild.

“There is no such thing as a magic camera and this is not wedding photography,” Naudé tells me. When he shoots any of his work, he has a picture in his mind of what he wants. Sometimes he even sketches it first and only then does he set off to photograph his subject.

His love affair with cattle started with Ankole longhorns in 2012 when Naudé set out to document them in Uganda, county of their origin, and he also studied sacred cows in Indian and in Madagascar where their horns are used are used to decorate graves.

When these large-scale portraits of Ankole cattle went on exhibition he also published a book with the cattle photos called Sightings of the Sacred, and was contacted by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“What followed was a wonderful opportunity that saw a partnership grow between myself and President Ramaphosa. Over a period of eight months, I spent time on his farm Ntaba Nyoni, where I photographed the first Ankole cattle in history to come to South Africa. This became the subject of a third book, which we published together called Cattle of the Ages.

Naudé  bought his first cattle from Ramaphosa in 2017 and is now a prominent Ankole cattle-farmer and breeder. His cattle farm in Stellenbosch is called Benella Ankole Stud so-named after his son Benjamin and daughter Ella.

Only very limited editions of his prints are available for sale so after this there are no more unless the owner of a piece decides to sell it, so it’s very endearing to see that the last edition of several of his works are marked as belonging to the artist. Naudé tells me he is keeping these for his children.

In less than two hours at the opening of the exhibit he sells two pieces.

Taking portraits of Malagasy fighting cockerels in Madagascar is his new project that will be exhibited before the middle of 2025. “In this country cocks are bred for that purpose, they come in various breeds and beautiful colours and have named like Robocop and Rambo.”

Naudé won’t film them fighting, but will capture the essence, the ‘gees’ (spirit) of this fighting bird in all its exquisite feather, he tells me.

Naudé has also published a series of exquisite books showcasing his photos. Naudé’s first book, Animal Farm, was published by Prestel in 2012, followed by Sightings of the Sacred: Cattle in India, Uganda and Madagascar in 2016. His third book, Cattle of the Ages together with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was published by Jacana media in 2017. He self-published his fourth book, The Bovine Prophecy in 2020.

An artist that Naudé most admires is Walton Ford, an American who creates paintings and print in the style of naturalist illustration. Each of his paintings is a meticulous, realistic study in flora and fauna, billed with symbols, clues and even jokes.

LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE