Baobab Collection
Africa's upside down tree, from Venda to the pans of Botswana
Koos van der Lende
The baobab tree is the so-called upside down tree with the roots in the air.
— Koos van der Lende, on Kubu IslandThe baobab is Africa's upside down tree, its bare branches held up like roots to the sky. Some are four or five thousand years old. The bark is smooth and soft, there is no wood in it to burn, only cork, and in times of drought elephants break into the trunks for water.
For Koos van der Lende it is the tree that says Africa. He has followed it from Venda in the far north of South Africa, to Mapungubwe where three countries meet, to Kubu Island and the Baines baobabs on the pans of Botswana, places you can only reach in the dry season.
He goes in winter, when the leaves have fallen and each tree shows its true character, and he works at the edges of the day: against the rising sun, in the last colour of the evening, and long after sunset, when he paints the trunks with light.
- Works9 panoramas
- PlacesSouth Africa and Botswana
- Made onSlide film, 6 × 17 cm
- Edition25 of each, signed and numbered
- Sizes80 to 140 cm wide
- PricesFrom $980
The Works
Koos van der Lende
For close to two decades Koos van der Lende has travelled Southern Africa with a panoramic film camera, planning each picture days ahead, where the sun will fall, at what time, at what angle. He still works on traditional slide film, which is processed and scanned to make prints of rare quality.
His archive runs from the Namib to the Indian Ocean. The Baobab Collection is drawn from it for this site, alongside the Classic Collection, Sacred Forests, Evidence of Mankind, the Water Pear Tree Collection, Solitary Survivor and the Latest Release.
Moments of Grace, eighteen years of his panoramas from Angola to the Seychelles, a linen cloth covered, hand assembled book in a handmade leather pouch, opening to a full metre wide.