Lindiwe Nkutha

titbits about me

about me as a human being
My name is Lindiwe Nkutha, I was born a little over thirty years ago in Soweto. i live in Westedene - Jozi. In the early days of my life I thought I wanted nothing more than to become an accountant. so I studied to become one, and for a while worked as one, until my life brought me to the realisation about just how wrong that thought was. at which point I found that I had to replace that thought with another – call it a more slightly correct one. so I decided to quit my job and started listening to what at the time i sensed was the universe’s suggestive whisperings about what I needed to do. the more I listened the clearer it became what the universe was saying. I felt urged in the direction towards story telling. general story telling using as many mediums as I could master. in response to that call I started writing poetry in the late 1990’s, then moved on to writing short stories in 2003 – two of which have now been published in anthologies of short stories, and one which I self published.

my new found love for telling stories grew so much that I came to a point where I felt that text alone was no longer enough as a vehicle - the image started appealing to me. although it was to film that I was first drawn, photography had long lived at the back of my head as perhaps a more artistic way of capturing the image – (aside from drawing and painting of course). at the beginning of 2002 I made a point of learning as much about film as I could. a move which paid off because in 2004 I was given an opportunity through the out in africa film festival to make a short film (3min) called “muted screams’ – which has now been shown in south africa, the united kingdom, and in brasil.
in 2005 armed with the experience and confidence from that experience I made another short film (8min) based the self published short story called “jocasta’s hairballs”
at the beginning of 2005 I took up photography lessons and before the year was over, I had already had two exhibitions at the constitution hill, as part of the ansister collective – and exhibited a photographic essay called “this way we bleed” and a multimedia project following the “jocasta’s hair balls” theme.

about me as a photographer
my basic philosophy about photography, is that some things are best seen with one eye closed. i close my eye a lot of times to look at the way women interact with the world and what the world in turn does to them. I look to real life for inspiration, but enjoy rendering this inspiration to interpretations of my own. so although I have taken pictures of real life as it happens, I am much more fascinated by the process and the end result of what comes out from interpretation. this preference I think stems from my also being a writer and from that part of me that is constantly reshaping and reframing real life into stories.