For the months of November and December, Serious Coffee in Courtenay will be hosting an exhibition of photographic Images of Light by accomplished Comox Valley photographers Christina Nienaber-Roberts, and Keith Roberts. As they share special moments upon their experience-rich 30 year journey together, the couple aim through their images, to inspire a connection with the natural world that they so deeply love. For samples of these images, please visit the Shop.
Christina’s first photograph, taken at the age of 13, using a Kodak Instamatic, in Hluhluwe Game Reserve in KwaZulu/Natal was a close range portrait of a cheetah’s face. She still has that square black and white photograph that she proudly carried in the pocket of her high school blazer. Decades later, in Canada, she learnt from White Elk Medicine Woman that Keith’s spirit name is Running Cheetah!
Keith’s photographic explorations also started in 1966, with a very similar camera, when he started documenting his natural surroundings on a Boys Brigade camp in Snowdonia, North Wales – a part of the world where the couple still love to hike.
The couple met the day Keith arrived at the Bushveld Research Institute at University of Pretoria in South Africa, where he had won a PhD Scholarship and where Christina was working on her Masters. Two weeks later, on a hike in the Drakensberg Mountains, camera in hand, Keith proposed and two years later they married.
Geology offered them a ticket to live their passion for travel – and photography and over the years both photographers have developed an uncanny ability to capture light in a way that comes alive on canvas and tends to provoke a deep resonance within the viewer.
The couple’s photographic images and artwork have been included in exhibitions in South Africa and the Sultanate of Oman, where they lived and worked as geologists in the 1980’s and 90’s, as well as in the UK where Keith hails from – and later in Victoria, Vancouver and the Comox Valley. A number of their images have been published internationally, they have won some awards and have received commissions for their photography and pen and ink drawings for books and calendars. Christina has exhibited her lino prints of wildlife in the UK and Canada. In addition, Christina has self-published two books – one sharing the story behind the image on this exhibition titled Angel in the Lane, which was taken straight after sprinkling the ashes of her mother’s body in the Botanical Gardens in Pietermaritzburg , Kwa-Zulu Natal, where Christina was born and lived until obtaining her BSc from the University of Natal.
All the images in the exhibition are for sale and can be purchased directly from the artists, with 10% of the proceeds go to the CV Hospice Society. For more information, also on Christina’s current work as Natural Health Practitioner sharing Sacred Movement, Kripalu Yoga, Yoga from Chronic Pain Relief, Energy Work and Doula Services, or about workshops and walking the Labyrinth at The Heart Gate, or to purchase Christina’s books, please call (250) 890-9008 or connect via www.relaxandfeelradiant.com – after 27 November, as the couple will be on a photographic expedition in Malaysia.
More of the couple’s images may also be viewed at Highland Valley Family Clinic on the corner of Anderton and Guthrie in Comox.
Leave a Comment