Bettie Coetzee-Lambrecht

Capturing movement in all its varied forms, using the camera lens as a tool, has become a main interest in the late stages of my life. In the imperfect, in error, I find meaning. This new hobby replaced my earlier passion for using words to interpret the artworks on gallery walls in my role as artswriter for local South African publications. Through sheer fluke or serendipity, this life change happened. An art gallery owner saw the pictures I posted on Travel Photographers Network - pictures of photos that were merely used as illustrations of my journalistic travel stories, used in local publications. He offered me a solo exhibition. None of my arguments that the photos were not fine art ones, he insisted, and the Solo followed in 2010. Other exhibitions in other art galleries followed. My camera became my best friend. Extract from Dr. Elbé Coetsee’s opening address to the Launch of the photobook and First solo-exhibition STILL/LIFE IN MOTION - a portrait of time passing by Bettie Coetzee Lambrecht: The photographs included in this exhibition are a testament to the words of distinguished photographer Ansel Adams, who said, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” This exhibition comprises a fine selection of images from Bettie’s book, STILL/LIFE IN MOTION. It is an exploration of growing older youthfully. The images allude to our contradictory attitudes towards the natural forces of ageing - those in our physical environment and those of our physical bodies. We often experience the former with awe (see Protea), but the latter with discontent and fear. Bettie’s conceptual approach to subject matter and unusual camera techniques merge the juxtaposed. Older people dancing, having fun, are photographed with a slow shutter speed and different types of lighting. The result is extraordinary, abstract & expressionist. See, for example, “Twilight se voet”, Dance with my Shadow, Glove, Devil’s foot, Touch, Passion! Well-known photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, said that, “In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality”. Bettie, in this subtle manner, you have captured images that reflect the joy, spontaneity, as well as the dignity and acceptance of growing older. I emphasize your message to your daughter, Liezl, and I quote from your book, “May she and all of her generation joyfully embrace each stage of growing older and cherish the wisdom it brings.”