O

BIE Oberholzer, a legend in South African photography, has been creating images that both reveal and twist reality since he was a child. His latest book, OBIE: A Photographic Story Book, is a large coffee-table volume encompassing decades of his life’s work around the globe.

“I get this urge every day,” writes Oberholzer, “the urge to just pack up, lock up, leave everything behind and go. I am a fanatical, besotted goer-to-places I’ve never been to before, and then I love returning to my many favourite places. This urge of always needing to leave is distressing, a bedevilled anxiety to go in search of what lies on the other side of that bloody horizon.”

Distressing and bedevilled it may be for the photographer, but for lovers of beauty and connoisseurs of armchair travel it is a blessing — how much poorer our view of the world would be if adventurer-artists like Obie did not show it to us through the filter of their eyes.

OBIE: A Photographic Story Book, by Obie Oberholzer, is published by Quivertree (R500)