View 13 images ↗01 / 09
The Dog Show
I was interested in what happens when the language of the grand portrait is brought into an ordinary setting. The lights, the camera and the raised platform created a small stage.
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Photographer / Educator
Cape Town, South Africa
Practice
Photographs of places held
between states.
I work in the space where ordinary life, memory and landscape overlap looking for the quiet structures people build inside a complicated world.
View 13 images ↗
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View 16 images ↗03 / 09
Eat Crow
A temporary world of petrol, oil and braaing at the edge of Cape Town—portraits of limbo, where speed and ritual hold the complicated world at bay.
Kraaifontein, Cape Town2013—2018
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View 36 images ↗04 / 09
De Aar
De Aar felt like a dead end to me. I recognised something in the pull between wanting to leave and giving up completely.
2021
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View 15 images ↗05 / 09
Omkeerpunt
Working on text, placeholder text.
South Africa 2019-ONGOING
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View 10 images ↗06 / 09
Blyvooruitzicht
A landscape after extraction. Ruin, resilience and unexpected life gather around the remains of one of South Africa’s oldest gold-mining towns.
Gauteng, South Africa2019
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View 11 images ↗07 / 09
Kempton Park Hospital
An abandoned institution caught between utility and myth. Empty wards, severed corridors and leftover objects form a portrait of organised care after the organisation has gone.
Gauteng, South AfricaArchive
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View 33 images ↗08 / 09
Coronation Park
I recognised something of myself in the camp, an inheritance I could neither fully claim nor comfortably reject.
Krugersdorp2007
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View 38 images ↗09 / 09
Eat Crow
A temporary world of petrol, oil and braaing at the edge of Cape Town—portraits of limbo, where speed and ritual hold the complicated world at bay.
Kraaifontein, Cape Town2013—2018
Complete body of work →
02 / Profile
Gerhardt Coetzee is an Afrikaans photographer and educator based in Cape Town. His work explores South Africa’s shifting micro-societies—the vernacular, strange and ordinary—searching for meaning in the broken beauty through which he interprets his surroundings.
Selected recognition
- ABSA L’Atelier Top Ten Finalist
- Sasol New Signatures Merit Award
- Sony Profoto Gold & Silver Awards
- Design Indaba Emerging Creative
- Sasol Permanent Collection
03 / Mentoring
SHADOWWORKS / Photographic educationDevelop the work.
A six-month guided programme for photographers developing, returning to, or completing a personal body of work—with individual guidance, group feedback, workshops and a final exhibition.
SHADOWWORKS mentoring ↗