Andre Strauss

I as born into what somewhat naively was said to be the war to end all wars - and indeed, since all told it left more than 50 million for dead, at least half of them civilians, this then set the pattern for those still to come! So yes, with the inevitability of nuclear proliferation, and what with the ongoing population explosion I am therefore not overly optimistic about the future existence of the human race. Even without our genetically bestial nature it is debatable whether the earth has the resources to sustain us. My work often appears to joke about the human predicament. What alternative does one have if one has lost all faith in priests and politicians, and particularly so here in Africa? What else can one do if one belives that, finally, there is nothing that can save us from ourselves?... And indeed, why should one not make one's peace with it when, in fact, the entire universe is going the same way as bit by bit it continues to expand and one by one the stars irreversibly burn out? I do not see existence as being absurd. It is what it is. What is absurd is the conceit that inevitably ends in existential angst - but then what else should one expect from risen apes?

B A Fine Arts, Hons; post graduate Higher Education Diploma; M A Fine Arts abandoned due to political pressure from the then Apartheid government (Thesis topic: 'The Ambiguity of Sado-Masochistic Imagery in Religious and Primitive Iconography"). Fellow of the International Professional Photographers Association.