Cape Town based artist Alex Jordaan grew up close to nature on a farm in the Boland. From a young age, he developed a curiosity about art and photography. This formed the base for developing into the artist and photographer he is today. Alex specialises in two distinctly different photography styles.

Firstly, he is a nature photographer. This style developed through his love of nature and the need to educate the public about the conservation of our fauna and flora, a topic he feels very strongly about. Much of this photography is captured during multi-day hikes such as the Otter Trail, Whale Trail and others, where he carries all his camera gear for days in search of the perfect shots. This includes anything from landscapes all the way through to macro photography, with a particular focus on Cape Fynbos, edible plants and the Otter hiking trail. This reflects his calm, sensible and composed side.

Then there is the side that constantly challenges the norm, pushing boundaries and creating imagery in ways no one has done before. A leader in both star trail photography and land art, Alex combines the two to create a completely new genre. Using film cameras with exposures of up to eight hours he uses the rotation of the earth to capture star trails in the background, telling the story of that entire night in each shot, whilst capturing manually created, three-dimensional, land art in the foreground. The land art is created by manually setting out coordinates in two dimensions on a dry lakebed using a visual aid prototype that he designed and built specifically for this purpose. Using these coordinates, images are created with different luminous objects, like ropes, washers, etc. These three-dimensional illusions become fully visible at night when it is dark and the human eye cannot see much depth. Capitalising on the mystique of the desert night his images evoke an energy or emotions rather than capturing a moment.

He’s earlier work has been published and exhibited at numerous exhibitions since 2011. He is also working on a photography book based on his hikes, and on several future exhibitions.