An African Journal, by Horst Klemm

An African Journal, by Horst Klemm. ISBN 9780620181532 / ISBN 978-0-620-18153-2

Horst Klemm’s first book, An African Journal, is a special way to enjoy the photographers work. Here one can almost touch the passion and compassion this artist-photographer feels for Southern Africa.

Horst Klemm  

In the 1980's a merciless drought, like a vengeance, smote the innocent Himba people of the Kaokoveld. No rain fell and no grass grew. A stinking wind, roared hot from the kitchens of hell. Herd animals bellowed and died by the dry wells. The great thirst choked the life out of eight beasts in every ten. The gentle Himba, who measure their wealth in cattle, sheep and goats, were harshly taxed. They tore up their roots and forsook their ancestral home, leaving behind no more than five thousand of the people to stand vigil over what might have been. Green life blistered in the heat, trees withered and the thornbushes turned to stone. The desert returned to claim its own. Travellers in this part of the world soon learn that roads, and the maps which represent them, are not so much reality as expressions of intent. So it is that 50 degrees of heat finds us jolting along the road to Rundu, marked large on our map. It might be nice to stop and send some postcards home. Alas, the Post Office has no stamps - maybe tomorrow, we are told. Goodbye then to Rundu, a place of inumerable liquor stores and filling stations. As we bounce back onto the road we notice the Bank is closed. A few hundred kilometres further along the road to the edge of the world we come to Kamanjab. There is only one shop and attached to it a Bank which opens only once a month on pay day. A board outside the shop is titled "Weak Payers" -followed by the names and details of those who owe money It is a large board and a long list. Not knowing whether supplies will readily be available to the north, we stock up with food, water and diesel and head our truck into the unknown. The animal disease control fence between Damaraland JL and the Kaokoveld seems like the last outpost at the end of the earth. There is no fuel station and the drinking water is at best third grade, so we detour to a place called Palmwag where we top up with all we need to take us north to the Kunene river and back. We are setting off into this land of living fossils in search of a rare creature - the Black Desert Rhino. An unaccountable lust for rhino horn and elephant ivory, mainly in the markets of Asia and Arabia, have been responsible for the wholesale slaughter of much of Africa's heritage. Today there are fewer than 5 000 rhinoceroses left in the entire continent which once was home to many tens of thousands of these fabulous beasts. In an attempt to make poaching unprofitable, game wardens in Namibia have resorted to darting the animals and cropping their horns before releasing them again into the wild. Anne and I are heading for the deep desert where we hope to sight a rhino with horn intact - the original face of Africa. [...]

This is an extract from the book: An African Journal, by Horst Klemm.

Title: An African Journal
Fotographer: Horst Klemm
Editor: Denis Smith
Publisher: Horst Alexander Klemm
Limited edition. Johannesburg, 1994
ISBN 0620181532 / ISBN 0-620-18153-2
ISBN 9780620181532 / 978-0-620-18153-2
Hardcover bound in half leather and canvas, slip case, 24x32 cm, 198 pages, throughout colour photographs