Neo Ntsoma
Biography
Neo Ntsoma is one of the few black female photojournalists in South Africa. Because of Apartheid restrictions, Neo turned to photography and has become one of the stars of the craft with a string of recognition and awards.
In 2005 she won the Premier Award Winner in the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards (one of South Africa’s most prestigious journalism awards); she was a National Geographic All Roads Film and Photography award recipient. In 2004, she became the first female recipient of the CNN African Journalist Award for Photography, her work was selected for TIME magazine “Pictures of the Week” and for the second year in a row, she won a number of awards in the Fuji African Press Photo Awards. She was also the first photographer from the Southern Hemisphere to have a photograph selected for the cover of the One World Calendar (New Internationalist magazine calendar).
Her work has appeared in publications such as, The London Telegraph, TIME Magazine and The Washington Post. She has also exhibited in Holland, Norway, Italy, France, India, Bangladesh and the United States.
Artist's Statement
I use to take pictures to make people believe in me. Now, I take pictures to make people believe in the subject of my photographs. My aim is to share my point of view about something, and also what I am feeling about it. But what’s important for me is to capture the spirit and soul of the subject I am photographing.
I only choose to photograph a subject matter with which I can personally identify. Being a woman gives me an added advantage in better telling women’s stories…. whether it’s the suffering of the women in the slums of Dhaka in Bangladesh, the poor women of the informal settlement in Johannesburg or a Muslim woman in Tanzania. For me, it’s all the same because we are all women of the universe.