I am a South African artist, photographer, expedition leader, and storyteller — though none of those worlds have ever existed separately for me. They have always travelled together.
For more than three decades, I have lived a life in motion, leading expeditions through 34 African countries. From the forests of the Congo Basin to the brutal beauty of the Sahara Desert, I have spent much of my life in places beyond the edges of ordinary travel. Places where maps fade, roads disappear, and silence begins to speak.
The camera was never an accessory to that life. It became part of how I moved through the world. Part witness, part survival.
My foundation is in Fine Art, shaped years ago at the University of Pretoria under Professor Nico Roos, whose landscapes left a permanent mark on the way I see light, stillness, and space. His work carried the quiet gravity of Turner paintings — the Turners of my soul, as I still think of them today. In 2025, I completed a Professional Digital Photography certification through the University of Cape Town, refining the technical language behind an instinct I had already been following for years.
I photograph what most people overlook.
The weathered doorway peeling beneath decades of heat and dust.
The old man sitting unknowingly inside perfect light.
A cloud gathering over an empty Karoo road.
An elephant pausing long enough to look directly back at you.
And always the leopard — solitary, self-contained, moving through shadow like memory itself.
I work primarily in black and white because monochrome strips away distraction. It asks more of both the photographer and the viewer. I do not stage moments. I do not direct them. I wait. For balance. For tension. For the geometry of a scene to reveal itself naturally.
But I also deeply love colour photography — not loud colour, but colour that breathes quietly. The soft dominance of a single primary tone. The gentle support of a secondary. Dusty pinks in fading light. Ochres against shadow. The muted blues before rain. Colour, for me, is emotional rather than decorative. It is atmosphere. Temperature. Memory.
My work lives in what I call Stillness That Moves — imagery shaped by silence, atmosphere, and the emotional weight carried inside wild and forgotten spaces. It is about the pause between footsteps, the shadow behind a façade or a baobab tree, the presence that lingers long after the subject has disappeared.
These are not photographs made from observation alone. They are made by someone who has walked those roads — as an expedition leader, as a witness to extraordinary places, and as a woman continually searching for meaning in the quiet spaces of the world.
My feet on the earth.
My eyes on the horizon.
http://viviennegunning.com/
http://viviennegunning.substack.com/
@VivieGunning
