Basotho People at Work
There was no great plan or ‘skeleton’ of my book. In about the year 2004 I began to collect images and categorised them into various aspects of life in Lesotho; Transport, agriculture, industry etc.
These themes were all put together into a very rough mock-up.The software for this cost 12 quid in London. Being a trader at heart, my first thought was for sales material to help sell the project.
One miserable winter day in June 2009, having nothing better to do, I went to the book launch of “Then and Now”. This is an anthology of images taken before and after 1992 by South Africa’s top photographers. There I met the editor Riaan De Villiers, of Highveld Press. He edited that.....
A bunch of lonesome heroes.
Gaelle,David, Ben and Jo are in Malealea this week-end. Tomorrow all four ride out in a possie for a whole days ride up to a village in the mountains. They will eat and drink and talk with with the shepherd village and Chief Khotso. You can see Ntate’s Khotso’s Merino goats in my book. Sleep in a goatsherd hut with mice and little chickens running around inside that hut. Pigs snorting outside! When you get back to the lodge after another full day’s ride with the lovely smell and sweat of the ponies and their leathery tack and the aromas from the pastures, cattle and oxen which envelope you as you pass, you will not like the smell of the.....
water moving me
I have just had 5 ~ 35mm negs printed by someone who is probably one of the worlds best hand print (silver nitrate) artisans; Dennis Da Silva. 45 years in the dark room. It has taken 3 years of experimentation and hestitation for me to have the courage to present some of my work to him. I suppose you could compare this to preparing a visit to the Delai Lama and your philosophy is still “unconcerned, but thinking about it”. Pending. When I captured the images of water moving through Lions River in the Natal Midlands I had a sort of funny feeling. Electric, emotional and palpitations over-ridden by my energy to just make more and more images whilest the light.....
Basotho People at Work ~ About the Book
About the Book ~ Basotho People at Work
FOR THE best part of a decade, businessman turned photographer René Paul Gosselin has been increasingly drawn to the remote mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
Gradually, he has learnt that, rather than chasing people and scenes, he should ‘wait quietly by the roadside’, and his subjects will eventually arrive by themselves.
This approach has resulted in a stunning set of photographs depicting the lives of a people who, while fundamentally at peace with themselves and their environment, are constantly at work: ploughing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, milling, weaving, and tending their livestock.
They include images of a gathering of hundreds of Basotho horsemen in the remote central highlands, held under the auspices of their paramount chief, to discuss grazing.....
Who is watching who
The first attempt of any enthusiastic observer, writer, photographer or inquisitive tourist at the discovery of Lesotho in the larger sense will inevitably lead to extensive travel. Days are spent rumbling along the gravel roads of the mountains and tearing along the fine tarmac roads of the lowlands looking for the special picture, the Basotho cavalier with Morokotlo hat, and wrapped in his black and yellow Sienna Morena blanket astride a fine bay pony. Or hours of driving the mountain road to see the large numbers of herds and herd boys heading out on their annual transhumance towards the summer grazing valleys in the Central Range.
Eventually the traveller seasons, or like a good wine, aerates once the cork is out and.....