Veteran photographer and writer Obie Oberholzer publishes new book
By CityLife Arts Writer
Photographer and writer Obie Oberholzer is difficult to find as he’s mostly somewhere else, riding the roads of his beloved Southern Africa. A free spirit, a workaholic (and the occasional binge kind), a self-proclaimed visual thug and vagabond, he’ll laugh at the claim that he is a national treasure. But national treasure he certainly is, devoting much of his life to discovering what lies beyond Fokkolfontein, ever-returning to find what still lies beyond Fokkolfontein, and giving it all to us in his inimitable pictures and words.
Written and photographed as only Obie can do, undaunted and with rough edges, Happysadland pages through his life on the road as he devours the diesel of the unpredictable and the dust of the haphazard.
A collection of situations, incidents, thoughts and humour, it embraces the ridiculous, the whimsical, the joyful and the forlorn, and ultimately is a vivid documentary by one of this country’s greatest storytellers that shows us just how much we have here to love and to hope for.
Obie will be in Cape Town from Thursday, 25 to Tuesday, 30 August. Obie will be participating at the Riebeeckskasteel Solo Studios – Intimate Art Encounters over the weekend, Friday, 26 to Sunday, 28 August. Please refer to the organisers press release, also attached for more information.
Obie will be in Johannesburg from Thursday 1, to Friday, 2 September, 2022 to promote his new book..