Sacred Forests
The last indigenous forests of Southern Africa
Koos van der Lende
As you enter this area, it is just dead, dead quiet.
— Koos van der Lende, the sacred forest of VendaMost of South Africa's old forest is gone, logged for timber and pine. What is left survives in small, protected pockets: a sacred forest kept by the Venda people, the deep Outeniqua forest of the Southern Cape, the fig and fever tree marshes of Ndumo, and the riverine forest along the Olifants and the Limpopo.
Koos van der Lende went back to these places over many years, waiting for rain, low cloud and mist, the only light in which a forest gives itself up. Each one is a single panorama on slide film, and each holds the same thing: a total quietness, and the isolation of a world that has not been touched.
Between the works are his field notes, what he has learnt about season, light and contrast in forest country, for anyone who wants to see these places the way he does.
- Works8 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. Sacred Forests is drawn from it for this site, alongside the Classic Collection, Evidence of Mankind, the Water Pear Tree Collection, the Baobab 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.