SAMANTHA REINDERS is an award-winning photographer and multimedia producer currently based in Cape Town, South Africa – pursuing stories there and abroad.
She moved back to South Africa after completing her Masters in Visual Communication at Ohio University.
She is not 100% certain when her career actually began – but thinks it was either somewhere in the curious hills of Appalachia, whilst riding shotgun in her fathers beloved Landrover or sandwiched between two other photographers in the press pool in the Oval Office. (She covered the Washington, DC political landscape – including the White House and Capitol Hill in 2005). Either way, she’s glad it did because it has, among other things, allowed her to chase penguins, fly on Air Force One, swim with sharks and meet a collection of interesting people – from business men to homeless men, survivors, sadhus and sociopaths and sweet grannies at bake-sales. She’s explored remote islands, teeming cities and untouched landscapes. In this way she thinks the profession of photojournalism is a privilege.
Samantha is inspired by and pursuing stories about our relation to and impact on the landscape we inhabit. She is motivated by (among other things…) the African continent and its complexities and is currently working on personal projects that tell a slither of its story.
In addition to her work behind the lens she teaches documentary photography, has edited several books and is keenly interested in curatorship and the importance of the photographic archive.
EDITORIAL AND NGO CLIENTS INCLUDE:
Time, NPR, US News & World Report, The New York Times, MSF, OSF, The Gates Foundation, UNDP, L’Express, Der Spiegel, Vogue, National Geographic Books, The Smithsonian, Action Aid, The Sunday Times, Architectural Review, Readers Digest, The Fader, The London Financial Times, South African Tourism, The Ocean Conservancy and FaceBook.
EXHIBITIONS AND THINGS THAT MAKE MY MOTHER PROUD
2016 Scope: The Nepal Issue (Group exhibition), Taragaon Museum, Kathmandu, Nepal
Horizons (Curated), Drawing Rooms, South Africa
2015 Specialist Journalist of the Year, Media24, South Africa
2014 WalkFastWhistle (Solo Exhibition), Drawings Rooms, South Africa
2014 UnPublished (Curated), Young Blood Art Gallery, South Africa
2013 My Future, My Voice, Photo Workshop in collaboration with the US Embassy in Swaziland.
2011 Mondi Shanduka Media Award for outstanding South African journalism
2010 Open Society Foundation Media Fellowship
Bonani Africa (Group exhibition), South Africa
Africa Scores (Group exhibition), Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam
Twenty Ten on the Road (Group exhibition), South Africa
2009 World Press Photo Project, Twenty-Ten Workshop, Ghana and South Africa