Kalahari Dreaming

In this heat, the title of Dr Bernd Wasiolka’s exhibition is dissuading.

No one wants to dream of the desert when the sun has mistaken the city for one. Instead people want to dream of cool breezes, cold pools with a sweet summer song buzzing by from a well-tuned radio. Maybe something by The Mamas and The Papas.

Many of us go to the Omba Gallery nonetheless and we see that, like the exhibition title suggests, the Kalahari is dreaming.

At dawn and dusk and at midday the red sand dunes dream ostriches, leopards and lions to life and Wasiolka watches it all from behind a discerning lens.

The first few photographs in 'Kalahari Dreaming' are a collection of cats.

Bright with remarkably expressive eyes they stare out of their frames in images so detailed one feels inclined to stroke the photographs like one would a pet.

Well, perhaps not a particularly fierce looking lion whose hierarchy on the food chain is so famed it foregoes framing to be stretched entirely over the edges of the canvas so he seems to stare at you from inches away. The porcupine quill hovering near the great cat’s mouth is further cause for concern as it seems the fearsome beast has devoured it whole despite its faith in spiky defences.

Most delightful of Wasiolka’s wild cats is a photograph titled 'A Lion Youngster got more than he bargained for'. An incredible image that depicts a maneless lion that has just caught a bird and tortoise and clamps them carefully in his mouth as if enjoying the best of a desert buffet.

This is a photograph that aptly introduces Wasiolka’s elegant though slightly offbeat style of wildlife photography. Inventive in his framing, with each caption consisting of a simple phrase reminiscent of the voice-over of a quaint Discovery Channel documentary, Kalahari dreaming becomes a collection of subtle animal characters that may be friends or foes in his vast and sometimes glittering desert.

Beyond the cats, Wasiolka has a photograph of an ostrich that is a lesson in cute composition. With most of its body out of frame and its neck bowed in a deep ‘u’ relatively far from its two straight legs, Wasiolka’s ostrich is without its famed feathered body, which makes for an amusingly odd but familiar creature.

Not always capturing individual animals, Wasiolka also presents a herd of springbok calmly making their way toward the riverbed. Here Wasiolka extends his canvas to accommodate an extreme long shot that sets these dancers of the desert against the muted green and the omnipresent brown of the Kalahari replete with a brilliant stretch of bright blue sky.

Another springbok photograph sees the animals looking less tranquil. Obviously alarmed and embroiled in a dance of fear, the springbok are captured as a mire of similar bodies slightly blurred with speed as they run from an unnamed enemy.

“In the epic hunt: ready, steady go,” a springbok is being chased by a lion. In a powerful picture that depicts the dangerous reality of the habitat, Wasiolka captures the differences between the hunter and the hunted by presenting the springbok as blurred as though it is about to become a memory while the lion is sharp and deadly in focus as it gains ground in the rear.

On smaller frames on the right back wall are some of Wasiolka’s anthropomorphic animals. Depicting a tortoise that is seemingly smiling, a gecko catching a tan in the sun and two chameleons kissing, this section of Kalahari dreaming seems a little more whimsical in character and titling.

On the left back wall, Wasiolka’s mood is majesty. Photographing animals in silhouette and bathed in waning or waxing light, Wasiolka’s captures the 'Battle of strength', which depicts two gemsbok locking horns at dawn and, in two other photographs, a lioness and a wildebeest in separate seas of iridescent grass.

All beautifully composed with a hallmark of rich, deep colours and saturation, 'Kalahari Dreaming' is wildlife photography that forgets to be utterly overdone and entirely boring and is beautiful, thoughtful and a treat instead.

'Kalahari Dreaming' will be on display at the Omba Gallery at the Craft Centre this weekend. The exhibition closes on 20 October 2013.

– martha@namibian.com.na

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