Time and Light

For over five decades, Helga Kohl has quietly crafted some of Namibia’s most compelling visual narratives. Kohl has dedicated her career to revealing the poetry in timeworn places and the ethereal dialogue between light, space and memory. Her work occupies a rare place in contemporary photography: intuitive, deeply observant and profoundly rooted in architecture as both subject and lens.

In her upcoming exhibition we are honoured to present a selection from Kohl’s well-known series on Kolmanskop, her contemplative explorations of the abandoned town Elizabeth Bay, and a suite of architectural abstractions from Windhoek. These bodies of work trace an aesthetic logic that Kohl herself has described as “painting with natural light” – an approach where time, composition and the subtleties of atmospheric conditions are as integral as the structures she photographs.

Since becoming a freelance photographer in the mid-1970s, she has been a member of the Professional Photographers of Southern Africa (PPSA) and won numerous accolades, including a fellowship in Fine Art Photography. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums across Africa, Europe and the United States and resides in the public collection of the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the National Museum of African Art in Washington, the National Art Gallery in Mali (Bamako) and several international private collections.

What ties the works in this exhibition together is Kohl’s architectural focus – not simply on buildings as objects, but on what they reveal about human presence and absence, memory and loss. Her Kolmanskop series remains her most iconic project. This once thriving diamond mining town in the Namib Desert was abandoned in the mid-20th century, and slowly the desert has reclaimed its rooms, corridors and facades. In Kohl’s images, sand ripples across floors and spills through doorways while light streams across peeling walls, evoking both the traces of life that once animated the town and the inexorable forces of time and nature that transform all human endeavour.

“Before I take a picture it is important for me to observe the light. Light is the most important aspect to my photography. You have to find out the date and the time when light is at its best. It takes a lot of observation, planning and time before I take any photograph.” – Helge Kohl.

Kohl returned to Kolmanskop again and again over a period of sixteen years – not merely to record its decay, but to experience it, waiting for moments when the light shifts and shadows animate the space. According to Kohl, she goes at different times to look at the site, and only after careful observation does she start thinking about how to document it. This patience – an insistence on seeing before capturing – is what gives her photographs their poetic resonance.

Alongside Kolmanskop we include works from Elizabeth Bay, another Namibian diamond mining settlement abandoned in the mid-20th century. Like Kolmanskop, Elizabeth Bay was once a place of bustling human activity, now reduced to fragile shells of architecture, eroded by wind and salt-laden fog. Kohl’s Elizabeth Bay images articulate a similar tension between built monumentality and gradual dissolution, inviting viewers to consider not just what time erases, but what it reveals.

To balance these meditative explorations of decay and time, the exhibition also features Kohl’s architectural abstractions from Windhoek. Here she turns her lens to contemporary structures, finding unexpected patterns in façades, skylines and interior angles. Whether photographing a modern city office or a crumbling adobe wall, Kohl brings the same reverence to light, line and shape – affirming that whether old or new, architecture is always a language of human intent.

Throughout all these series, Kohl remains a staunch advocate for analogue photography. She believes that the discipline of working with film – where exposure must be right from the start and hesitation can yield virtue – sharpens a photographer’s perception. Her advice to emerging photographers is to walk with open eyes, explore patiently and allow the image to attract you before you take it.

This exhibition brings Helga Kohl’s architectural vision into dialogue with our own contemporary moment: a time when we are reminded how quickly environments change, how memory lingers in abandoned spaces and how photography can be a bridge between what has passed and what persists. It is a rare opportunity to experience the stillness and intensity of her gaze – a testament to the enduring power of light, time and the built world.