Simon Sephton is a publisher by profession but has been passionately taking photographs ever since he first used an old box camera at the age of 7.  He developed his passion through many hours in a darkroom during his school days, where he won regional photographic awards, and his first job was as a 17-year-old darkroom assistant on The Star in Johannesburg. The exigencies of study, family, and work pushed his interest in photography into the background, but the arrival of the digital age coincided with Simon’s widening exploration of the mountains of the Cape peninsula, and he soon developed a passion for water photography in particular.

 

Water, one of the earth’s most plentiful resources and yet the most precious, increasingly occupies a battle-ground as political, commercial, environmental and scientific interests compete to control, channel, and exploit it. It is easy to forget that it is also the principal substance of our bodily being, the nurturer of all life, and a reflector and container of light and beauty. These photographs bring the viewer the gift of waters most rarely noticed, recording moments of intense perception.  He says: “They are fleeting moments of ever-changing light patterns created unceasingly by bodies of water. The skin of any water surface is a mirror that plays with light. Ochre and orchard; improbable amber and wavering willow; sienna and cerulean and a violet sky." Here water is ‘held still’ so that we can feel and see the confluence of memory, passion and reverence.

He has held successful exhibitions of his water photographs in Kalk Bay and his work hangs in private collections in South Africa, England, USA and Switzerland.

Both his limited edition prints and open editions are now available online for the first time.