Classic Collection

Arid Wilderness No.1

Koos van der Lende spent two months in the far south of Angola, in the Iona desert along the Kunene River, from the end of the dry season into the rains, leaving only to renew his visa in Namibia. Scouting on foot, he found this umbrella thorn, which is not a tall tree. He wanted to show what an oryx sees when it rests in the shade at midday. At one o'clock, noon this far west, the round crown repeats in the round shadow beneath it. He placed the tree in the middle and went low, looking slightly up. In black and white only the greys of the tree and its shadow remain. It is one of his best selling prints.

There is no law in photography. It is what works, what is pleasing to the eye.— Koos van der Lende

Dead Vlei No.2

Koos van der Lende made this picture around 1996, near the start of his panoramic career, when the Sossusvlei area was still quiet and he could walk among the dunes at any hour. He climbed over the last red dune and Dead Vlei opened up below him: a white pan of dead camel thorn trees beneath one of the highest dunes in the world, some 300 metres tall. He set the camera low to the ground, so the hard, cracked crust of the clay leads the eye in, and kept to three colours: the blue sky, the red dune and the white pan.

I stood in awe of God's creation. He knows every grain of sand in this desert, just as He knows the hairs on our heads.— Koos van der Lende

Milibangalala Rocks

Milibangalala is a small place on the coast of southern Mozambique, not far from Maputo, which Koos van der Lende visited on a short scouting trip. On the coast a picture depends on two clocks at once: he wanted a long exposure in the evening, and he needed low tide at exactly the same time. On one of the few evenings he had there, both came together. Standing on a shelf of rock ringed with round growths, he let the exposure run on after sunset, and the sea turned to silk under the magenta sky. The colour is entirely natural.

It is easier to work into the evening than into the morning, because in the evening you can keep extending the exposure as the light falls.— Koos van der Lende

Hole in the Wall

Koos van der Lende came to the old Transkei coast early in his panoramic career, working with a large format camera. He was less interested in the famous arch than in what he saw in its outline: a ship run aground on the coast, with the small chimney at the back and the bow on the right. To hold that silhouette he needed the light before sunrise. It was winter, and to reach the spot he packed his equipment into a big plastic container and swam it across the river mouth. He reached the rounded black rocks in time, and the long exposure turned the incoming waves to mist.

I was very surprised when I saw what it became. It has a beautiful atmosphere, the gold and the blue, and the light reflecting on the rocks.— Koos van der Lende

African Sunset

On his first journey through the Central Kalahari, Koos van der Lende spent the first night in the Khutse Game Reserve, just to its south, guiding a small group who did not want to cross the Kalahari on their own. The yellow winter grass and the camel thorn trees against the setting sun stopped him. Without filters the grass would have fallen into silhouette, so he darkened the sky with two hard graduated filters until the grass seems to glow. Years later an advertising agency bought the picture for a marula liqueur, added an elephant, and called the trees marulas. They are camel thorns.

It was just so appealing, the yellow winter grass and the camel thorn trees against the sunset.— Koos van der Lende

Sandstone Pillar

Crossing the open plains of the Free State, a country of cattle farms and very few trees, Koos van der Lende came upon this sandstone pillar. With no timber to hand, the pioneers cut fence and anchor posts from the sandstone of the small hills, and some still stand long after the fences have gone. He is drawn to things that seem out of place in a landscape: an old car, a wreck, a stone post. During a long exposure he painted the pillar with a hand held spotlight, while the clouds raced overhead and the grass moved in the wind.

I find it a very interesting thing, almost alien in the landscape, like an old car or a wreck.— Koos van der Lende

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Koos van der Lende returned to Namibia again and again in the 1990s for its wide open spaces and its quiet. This railway line runs beside the road just outside the village of Aus, on the way to Lüderitz and the sea. In those days the road was gravel. He wanted the heat of the desert, its stark colours and harsh sunlight, with the small 198 sign as the accent. The line has since been rebuilt and the road tarred, so the picture also holds a moment that has passed.

Photography is not only the image you look at, but also time. So many years later, everything has changed.— Koos van der Lende

Bottle Tree No.2

Driving from Sossusvlei towards Walvis Bay, on a long stretch of seemingly nothing about 75 kilometres before the Kuiseb Canyon, Koos van der Lende saw a small tree standing alone far off the road. Up close it was a little bottle tree. He went back to the vehicle for four reflector boards and set them up on the left while the sun stood high on the right, at ten or eleven in the morning, to show the heat of the semi desert. He took off the centre filter so the edges fall darker and the eye goes to the tree.

I do not want to record the landscape. I want to make art in the landscape. People sense something different in the picture, even if they cannot explain it.— Koos van der Lende

Fallen Camelthorn

In another dead pan near Sossusvlei, Koos van der Lende worked straight into the sun, letting the fallen camel thorn and a second tree in the distance stand as silhouettes. A strong graduated filter held back the sky, so the light falls across the floor of the pan and brings out its beautiful texture.

A very tranquil picture, if that is possible in the desert, and just pleasing to look at.— Koos van der Lende

Mopane in Winter

Koos van der Lende often returned to the Nwanedi National Park in Venda, and his favourite season there is winter, when the grass stands tall and pale and the trees are bare. Here three mopane trees still held a few of their autumn leaves. One had a far finer shape than the others, so he stripped the last dead leaves from its neighbours by hand until it stood alone in the clearing. It took a great deal of stripping.

I think it is a very strong, quiet and serene African landscape.— Koos van der Lende

Richtersveld Mountains

Just outside the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park rises the Rosyntjieberg, the raisin mountain. Below it grows the gifmelkbos, a desert euphorbia with a poisonous white sap that only the black rhino will eat. After sunset Koos van der Lende made a 30 minute exposure, moving through the scene with a hand held spotlight and painting each plant in turn: the near one briefly, the far ones for longer, and the quiver tree at the back.

A beautiful atmosphere, late after sunset, with the light painted onto each plant.— Koos van der Lende

Storm over the Grassland

Koos van der Lende scouted this place in the Kalahari Gemsbok Park the day before and worked out exactly where the sun would stand at a quarter to five. By three o'clock he was ready, the camera set up and the filters in place. Then the clouds began to build. For more than an hour he asked the Lord to clear them, and grew more and more cross. He was taking the filters off to abandon the picture when he felt the Lord ask him: have you seen My clouds? He looked up, and it was like a veil lifting. The next day he had his sun as well, and compared the two. This is the better one.

I said to the Lord, I know which one will be the best. It will be Yours. And it was so.— Koos van der Lende

Forsaken No.1

At Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa, Koos van der Lende came upon this wreck on the shore. Instead of working from the beach, as most people do, he moved round to the left. The day was heavily overcast. In the long exposure the moving water, the algae and the lichen on the rocks soften into something closer to a realistic painting than a photograph.

It is one of my favourites. It doesn't feel like a photograph, but more like a painting.— Koos van der Lende

Karoo Escarpment

With access to the whole of the Karoo National Park, Koos van der Lende camped on top of the escarpment and climbed down the rock face to find this view across the rocks to the plains of the Karoo below. He was set up early in the afternoon, with the rock in front lit by reflector boards, and waited for the sun to set within the frame. Cloud came in, then the sun broke through at the last. As soon as it set, night fell fast, and everything had to be carried back up the rocks in a hard wind.

The colours are all natural, very red. It was quite a mission, but it was worth it.— Koos van der Lende

Hlane

Koos van der Lende photographed Hlane Royal National Park as part of a commission to record the national parks and transfrontier parks that South Africa shares with its neighbours. There are no dramatic mountains here, but beautiful trees, forest and grass. It was summer, and everything was green. He worked straight into the sun, with reflector boards throwing a little light back onto the trunk. The grass was tall and full of ticks, and he spent much of the time picking them off.

Not a good experience, but a friendly picture, the sun breaking through the silhouette of the tree.— Koos van der Lende

Fever Tree Cluster

This is one of Koos van der Lende's favourite pictures over the years. He made it in southern Mozambique while working in the Lubombo transfrontier area, camping for a few days beside the lake where these fever trees grow, in malaria country, among mosquitoes he remembers as big as helicopters. It is an early morning picture, made almost into the light, with a graduated filter holding back the bright sky so the light falls on the trees and the shape of their canopy.

The picture shows only the result, not the effort behind it, or the chance of malaria and wild animals all around.— Koos van der Lende

Euphorbia Duet

Koos van der Lende went to Angola once, soon after the war ended, drawn by a magazine cover showing a shipwreck at Tombua. There was almost no tourism, burnt out tanks still stood beside the road, and he found his way along the Kunene to the sea with a single satellite map. Travelling alone with a vehicle full of equipment made him suspicious to everyone. In Iona he waited two days for a howling wind to drop, reading his Bible in a camp chair, while a local official returned again and again to ask who he was. On studio stands, his heavy reflector boards held firm in the wind for this picture.

A very stark, simple, minimalistic picture.— Koos van der Lende

Glimpse of Glory

This is one of Koos van der Lende's favourite pictures, as much for the adventure around it as for the picture itself. The Himba told him there was no road down to the Kunene. He went anyway, digging ruts for his wheels on the steep slopes, and reached the river out of water and exhausted. Overnight, rain inland turned the river into a roaring flood of mud. That evening, in the rain under a beach umbrella, he asked the Lord for a breakthrough. The sun broke in from the Atlantic side and the scene turned from cold blue to yellow, orange and at last deep red. This frame sits between the blue and the red. Only a graduated filter was used.

Please, just give me your best light. It is one chance.— Koos van der Lende

Evolution No.1

A hand woven fish trap rests on the cracked mud of the Skeleton Coast, where the Namib desert meets the cold Atlantic. It is the first picture of Koos's Evolution series.

Garden of God

The Namib Naukluft Park stretches for hundreds of kilometres, and in the dry season it is bare rock and sand. Koos van der Lende arrived just after rain, when the first green was coming up between the weathered red and yellow rocks. A graduated filter holds the sky, and the view looks down over the land almost from a bird's eye.

This is really a very special image of the park, a rare green picture of the Namib.— Koos van der Lende

Whale Bone

Koos van der Lende spent a month on a rare journey up the closed coast of Namibia from Lüderitz towards Angola, past old whaling stations and the small houses that German diamond seekers left more than a hundred years ago, still intact because so few people may enter. His guide could not understand why anyone would wait in the desert to photograph a whale bone. The bone is bigger than it looks, lying among fossil shells, with a couple of reflector boards throwing light back onto it.

It is an object that catches the eye, almost out of place, like an ox cart or a wreck.— Koos van der Lende

Bottle Tree No.3

Koos van der Lende came back to the bottle trees on the flats of the Namib Naukluft, some 75 kilometres from the road towards the Kuiseb Canyon, where he had made his earlier picture in winter. This time a hard wind was blowing from the west. He had learned not to ask for the wind to drop. He worked through the afternoon with reflector boards and a long exposure, and waited until just before sunset, when the boards still threw light and the blue was turning to yellow. The still tree and the moving leaves are one frame of film. When he exhibited it, a camera company representative refused to believe it was not a composite.

It is one exposure. That is what film does. It is one of my favourites of all the images I have made.— Koos van der Lende

Serenus

On the same month long journey up Namibia's closed Atlantic coast, Koos van der Lende found this field of pebbles on soft sand. Every footprint here stays: the wind fills the hollow, but the pebbles never return to where they were. So he tiptoed from rock to rock. While his guide went fishing a kilometre away, nature conservation officers arrived and were furious to find a photographer alone in the protected area, though his permits were in order. The film was not processed as he had hoped, but he believes the Lord turned it to good.

It is beyond what you can imagine. It is like something from a film, out of this world.— Koos van der Lende

Blyde River

Koos van der Lende was asked to photograph a new estate on the Blyde River near Hoedspruit, with the Drakensberg behind it. The river was the heart of the place. There were crocodiles in the river, but he took the camera into the water with him. On a windless day, with Velvia 50 film and a long exposure, the flow turns smooth while the pebbles stay clear through the green water, beneath the fig tree on the right.

Just a very serene and pretty image.— Koos van der Lende

Kalahari Sunrise

In the Molopo, on the edge of the Kalahari, Koos came back to this tree again and again until the sun and the clouds cooperated. It was freezing, and the grass so tall that he raised his reflector boards on a chair, a table and the roof of his vehicle to throw the first light back onto the tree.

The dark background, the silhouetted trees behind, and the lit grass and tree make for a very friendly and serene picture.— Koos van der Lende

Kafue Mopane Cluster

Kafue, one of Africa's largest national parks, is burnt almost every year by poachers and by people who believe fire brings better grass. The smoke made the sky so bright that Koos van der Lende worked only along the Lufupa and Kafue rivers. He camped ten metres from this cluster of mopane trees, on what the rangers told him was a poachers' path. He added more of the red fallen leaves to the burnt ground, and lit the trees at dawn with the headlights of his vehicle, parked at a distance, because a hand held light could not reach them all.

It is a very pleasant picture to look at. But the picture and the story behind it are always two different things.— Koos van der Lende