'Desire' - Original artwork 1/1 Photograph

Deryck van Steenderen is a photographer and short film-maker born in Cape Town, South Africa, during apartheid, to a British mother and a first generation South African father of immediate Dutch descent. Deryck currently lives in the UK. His upbringing heavily influences his work. His maternal grandfather and namesake, Dr. Deryck Humphriss, gave him his first camera, a Russian Zennit 35mm film camera, at the age of 15. Deryck still has the camera, and the first roll of film he ever shot with it, and has been shooting ever since. At the age of 18 his work from his first photojournalism shoot was selected by the Citizen Newspaper to be part of an exhibition on “Life in Alexandra” at the Union Buildings in Tshwane (Pretoria). Deryck pursued his passion for reportage photography as a freelance ‘stringer’ whilst studying photography at the School of Modern Photography in Johannesburg on a part time basis. His photographs of the Chris Hani riots in Cape Town in 1993 sold internationally. In 1994 following the collapse of apartheid he left hard news photojournalism to focus on commercial work and has shot prestigious international advertising and publishing assignments for top agencies and magazines. Deryck's fine art photography work is intensely personal to him. Giving him respite from commercial work his fine art work is his outlet for his personal expression. He was the chosen photographer for the Lexicons and Labyrinths catalogue, an art exhibition featuring famous artists Willem Boshoff, Fritha Langerman, Nadja Dhaenke, Malcolm Payne, Isaac Nkosinathi Khanyile, Sandile Zulu and Lien Botha, curated by Fritha Langerman. Known for his creative portraiture Deryck was commissioned to produce portraits of South African creative artists and performers who were identified to have contributed to positive change in South Africa, called Living Treasures. His portraits of David Kramer, Pieter Dirk Uys, Michael Atkinson, Taliep Petersen, Cecil Skotnes, David Goldblatt, Franklin Larey and Mervin Davis, were featured in national publications. An intrepid traveller, Deryck is currently working on an untitled personal project of landscapes and people of Southern Africa.