Photo AlchemyThe workbench
Collage and montageCut and rebuilt
African Art FusionWith Simon Shone
The Studio JournalStories and essays
Films and Atelier91 films
The wallEverything, one page
Martin Osner is a South African fine art photographer and painter who uses the camera as one of the tools on the workbench. Forty years of work, made in Hout Bay, Cape Town, and collected around the world.
The camera is one tool among many. It can come in at the start of a work, halfway through, or not at all.
Forty years of light, weather and patience: Abandoned, the Ethereal landscapes, the Master Trees and the city streets.
See the collections
The painter who stood up and told the photographer to sit down: the African Queen portraits and the original paintings.
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Photography, paint, gold leaf, salt and transfer in one work. Arcane No.1 began with moss on the underside of a plank in the vegetable garden.
Read the story of Arcane No.1Most people use the three as if they mean the same thing. Martin draws a clear line between them. Photography records what is there. Art photography is decorative, made to be lived with. Fine art photography is emotive: it says something, and it could only have been made by the person who made it.
It is the question he is asked about more than any other, and the one his teaching is built around.
Pick anything that catches your eye and tap it to see it larger.
Urban Design
Aura No.2
Abandoned No.40
Timeless | Portrait of an African Queen
Classic Black & White - Castle Rock
Ethereal Reverie No.2
Downtown No.3
Purple Reign
Eminence No.2
Medieval City No.3
Creation No.2
Solitude Panoramic
Abandoned No.29
Heartbeat of the Mother City No.1
Secrets in Eden No.1
Quintessence No.1
During her gap year, Martin's daughter Samantha Lee Osner walked into one of his classes because she was bored, and asked if she could sit in. She never left. For more than twelve years he has taught and mentored her, and today she is an established artist in her own right: a painter and mixed media artist who uses the camera as part of her process.
They exhibit side by side at Osner Gallery in Hout Bay.
How Martin moved from technically perfect commercial photography to art: a painter's gallery in Knysna, a book on hand colouring put on his desk, the first brush stroke on a thorn tree print, and four words overheard in a college canteen. For every photographer who suspects there is more.
Watch the filmMartin tells the whole journey himself, in a series still being recorded.
Weeks of grey skies, and a morning that felt less like something made than something given.
A black and white series made on the spur of the moment, during a Cape Town exhibition in 2007.
From weathered fishing boats to leftover paint on scrap paper: how photographic montage turns the lens into a brush.
Studio visits, artist interviews and long conversations about how art is made, collected and understood. Free to join, and members see each one before it goes public.
Sold through Osner Art Gallery online, shipped worldwide, and shown in person at Osner Gallery in Hout Bay.
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Online courses at the Art Photography Academy, live fine art classes on Zoom, and workshops on location.
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