PORTFOLIO
Marcus Jooste uses macrophotography and props like mushrooms and flowers to create a fairy-tale world, with a common garden snail called Vincent in the main role.
Marcus Jooste grew up on a farm in Zimbabwe and was fascinated by butterflies and other insects from a young age. That fascination grew into a love for macrophotography; his camera, like a magnifying glass, revealing the miniature world right under our noses. Eventually, one humble creature began to dominate the limelight – a common garden snail called Vincent. ( Vincent made his debut in go! #113) For Marcus, Vincent is a character who inhabits a fairy-tale world; a world that the photographer constructs using props like mushrooms, leaves and flowers, and which he brings to life using various lighting techniques. “I strive to get as much right in-camera as possible,” says Marcus, who only tweaks things like sharpness and colour in Lightroom. “I consider myself a photographer and not a digital artist.” He’ll play out a narrative in his head for days and then painstakingly create the set – sometimes indoors or outdoors in the garden. Only when everything is perfect is it time for the star of the show to take to the stage…