Margaret Courtney-Clarke

African Canvas

Margaret Courtney-Clarke was born in Swakopmund, Namibia (1949) where she currently lives and works. After studying art and photography in South Africa, she spent the next four decades working as a photographer in Italy, the USA and across Africa.  Margaret began her career working under Italian photographer and filmmaker Pasquale De Antonis, photographing art, architecture and antiquities, thereafter freelancing on magazine assignments in Europe and Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1979 Courtney-Clarke became persona non grata under the Apartheid laws and renounced her South African citizenship – later returning to South West Africa asserting her Namibian birthright under the protection of the UN. Throughout her career, Courtney-Clarke would pursue personal projects in Africa documenting feminine identity.