The sun was high above us and it was mind-numbingly hot. We had walked since daybreak and had stopped for a rest. On a distant ridge some elephants were standing very still in the shade of a tall tree. They were too far away for a photo, so I tried to focus my dazed brain on jotting down Jonah the tracker’s lines of pure poetry. This eventually became the unifying theme for an exhibition and a limited-edition book with photos of people, landscapes and animals from sub-Saharan Africa.
I lived in East Africa for the first time in the late 1960s, and spent a significant part of my early life hunting in the bush, swimming and spear-fishing on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and exploring the cities and villages where life in the new post-colonial era was slowly starting to take shape.
Africa left an indelible impression on me, and the sights, sounds and smells can come back to me quite suddenly, triggering a longing to be there.
