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Daniel Naude and President Ramaphosa bring you the Cattle of the Ages
Daniel Naude and President Ramaphosa bring you The Cattle of The Ages
Photographer Daniel Naude and President Cyril Ramaphosa collaborate on a stunning book about Africa’s Ankole cattle.
Johannesburg’s Everard Read Gallery is hosting Daniel Naude’s latest exhibition, A Decade of Seeing. It charts his journey from photographic portraits of dogs and sacred cattle to wild Bower birds and was captured over a decade of travel across three continents. His coffee table book documents the Africanis dog, their relationship to South Africa and their place in our landscape.
From dogs, this Stellenbosch arts graduate moved onto photographing cattle in societies where the animals are revered as more than livestock after which, he chronicled birdlife Down Under.
In Madagascar, Daniel captured the Zebu cattle as part of the Bara people’s ancestor worship; in India, his photographs depicted how the Brahmin see cows as divine and in Uganda, how they are central to Bahima culture.
The collaboration with President Ramaphosa has its roots in the story of how the President’s father, Samuel Mundzhedzi Ramaphosa, had to leave behind his cattle herd in Venda to find work in Johannesburg. It weakened his links with his ancestral origins and this book is part of restoring that lost legacy.
It took President Ramaphosa years to import Ankole from Uganda with correct quarantine and special breeding requirements but they are now established in the country. Daniel has gone all the way with these cattle and owns a small herd himself. Beyond photography, the survival of the Ankole is at the heart of preserving the indigenous African values and symbolism so important to this artist.
Daniel’s photographs hang in the renowned J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and he is proud to have worked with the President on the even bigger, cultural picture of these cattle.
