Available in: Cape Town, Western Cape
Focused on:
Photographer, Photojournalist, Producer, Multimedia, Photography, Multimedia Journalist
Coverage Regions:
Africa Asia USA & Canada
Languages Spoken: English, Afrikaans
Years of experience: More than 10
SAMANTHA REINDERS is a photojournalist and multimedia producer currently based between her hometown of Cape Town, South Africa and Kathmandu in Nepal. She holds a graduate degree in visual communications from Ohio University. She believes strongly in telling people’s stories – as personally as she can and with as much empathy as possible.
She’s not one for speaking in the third person. So….
I’m not 100% certain when my career actually began – but I thinks it was either somewhere in the curious hills of Appalachia, whilst riding shotgun in my dads beloved Landrover or sandwiched between two other photographers in the press pool in the Oval Office. (I covered the Washington, DC political landscape – including the White House and Capitol Hill in 2005). Either way, I’m glad it did because it has, among other things, allowed me 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. I’ve explored remote islands, teeming cities and untouched landscapes. I love what I do.
I’m inspired by and pursuing stories about our relation to and impact on the landscape we inhabit. I’m motivated by (among other things…) the African continent and its crazy complexities and am currently working on personal projects that tell a small slither of its story. I’m finding that, more and more, my personal work is exploring the line between art and documentary photography and I’m fiddling with installation and other visual mediums to tell stories in new ways.
In addition to working behind the lens I love to teach, which I do a lot of. I’ve also edited several books and am keenly interested in curatorship and the importance of the photographic archive.
I’ve been trusted by an array of editorial, NGO and commercial clients including:
National Geographic, The Smithsonian, Time, NPR, US News & World Report, The New York Times, MSF, OSF, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNDP, L’Express, Der Spiegel, Vogue, Action Aid, The Sunday Times, Architectural Review, Readers Digest, The Fader, The London Financial Times, South African Tourism, Goldman Sachs, Mazda, Mercedes Benz, The Ocean Conservancy and FaceBook.