• NATASHA UYS RENOWNED photographer Tony Figueira died in the early hours of yesterday morning at Swakopmund after a long battle with cancer. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of marrow cancer that causes bone lesions, in 2010.
The 57-year-old had a storied photographic career spanning decades, having left a lucrative career in the motor repair industry to embrace his passion for photography early on.
Figueira graduated with a journalism degree from Rhodes University, South Africa, in 1984 and started out as a photojournalist in the heady days of pre-independent Namibia. He spent many years documenting Swapo’s struggle for liberation, including capturing historic moments such as the return of Sam Nujoma, and Nelson Mandela’s visit to Robben Island and eventually South Africa’s exit from Namibia after the implementation of United Nations Resolution 435. He worked with some of the foremost media outlets around at the time, including Voice of America (VOA), O Publico (Lisbon), Gemini Agency (London), the Rand Daily Mail and the Weekly Mail (Johannesburg). He was a long-time friend of The Namibian and was there when the very first edition of the newspaper was published.
Chairperson of the Namibia Media Trust (NMT) and former editor of The Namibian Gwen Lister took to Twitter to pay tribute to Figueira’s legacy yesterday. “RIP Tony Figueira, a wonderful man and a great photographer. He fought the good fight until the end. We shall remember him.” When asked for comment, Lister said: “I will always remember Tony as both a personal friend and also a colleague who helped immeasurably in the early days of the newspaper in 1985. Although he wasn’t a full-time staff member, he was always there to help out, whether it was to deliver newspapers or do sports reporting.
“Tony was a kind and gentle soul with a heart of gold. My sincere condolences to Gabi, who stood by him through thick and thin, to Gina, and all their friends and family. He will be immortalised through his photography which he loved so much.” Figueira was the owner of the popular photography hub Studio 77, which he initially set up in 2004 with good friend and internationally acclaimed wildlife photographer Hans Rack.
“It is with great sadness that I learned of Tony’s death,” said Rack yesterday. “I’ve known him for over 20 years. We embarked on umpteen trips all over the country. I remember in 1998, I was the pilot on a flight to Ondangwa when we had catastrophic engine failure. It was pandemonium as I declared mayday with only about 1 000 feet to land over Katutura. All the while Tony was sitting next to me calmly opening his camera bag to photograph it all,” he said. “He was an esteemed photographer who I and many others looked up to. He had such incredible patience and was really a people’s photographer. There was so much awe and inspiration in his photography.”
Throughout Figueira’s career he immensely enjoyed training young photographers. In 2015 he moved to Swakopmund and chose to follow a more holistic approach to therapy. He is survived by his wife Gabi Figueira, daughter Gina Figueira, mother Maria Luisa Figueira, sister Anabela Almeida and nephew and niece Ricardo and Christina Almeida. Funeral and memorial service arrangements will be communicated by the family over the course of the next week.
