A SHOT AT AFRICA KAREL PRINSLOO Karel Prinsloo is an award-winning Namibian photographer with the prestigious World Press Photo Award on his list of accolades.
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KP: We are all the same; we are humans with the same issues and desires. We all want a decent life, a good education for our children and a better future for all.
self-taught photographer, Karel began his career at the Namibian newspaper Republikein. But it’s his humanitarian photography that has taken him all over Africa in the past three decades.
MYD: What do you love about being Namibian? KP: We love this land and there is something about this open space – it grabs you and never lets go of you. I love us as a nation – we are so diverse, yet so similar. We must accept each other for who we are, different but all so much the same.
His work has been published in major international publications including The New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek and more. A runner-up for the CNN Africa Journalist of the Year photographic award, Karel has documented war zones and crisis situations, and been witness to some of the harshest conflicts on the continent. But his heart, he says, is still in Namibia. MYD: How did you get into photography? KP: It started by accident. After high school I was desperately looking for a job. I decided I could be a journalist and went to the Republikein. They informed me that they did not have an opening as a journalist but they had an opening as a photographer, and they asked if I would be interested. I started the next day, and ruined my first roll of film by exposing it in daylight. MYD: What has been your most rewarding moment as a photographer? KP: There have been many. Covering the Mozambique floods in 2001, we brought worldwide attention to the disaster and in the process many countless lives were saved. Or when my coverage stopped a small-scale war in the DRC. I managed to get into the besieged town of Bunia in 2003 and started photographing the atrocities. A week later the French sent special forces in direct reaction to the coverage. The war stopped the next day. Sadly, the Congo is still in turmoil. The hardest thing in my work is to get people to pay attention and to care. These days editorial money is a very scarce thing, so our coverage is becoming less and less. We cannot tell people’s stories as they should be told. Without a witness, terrible things can happen. MYD: You recently did a project on Namibian cultures. What did you learn from this project?
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