Marianne Fourie from Madrid, Spain won Duggal's Capture the Moment photography contest for her photograph, Untitled (Christmas Tree).
Marianne was born in South-Africa, but is of French nationality and she has lived in four different countries throughout her lifetime. Today, she calls Madrid, Spain her home.
She studied Art for five years at a high school in South Africa (where it was possible to choose the subject as one of one’s majors). After high school she was accepted to the Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT but did not have enough money to attend. Instead she studied languages and literature on bursaries. After completing her Master’s degree in Comparative Literature in France on a French government bursary, Marianne returned to painting part-time until she became a full-time artist and photographer in 2005.
Marianne has exhibited in France, the US, Spain and Russia. Her most recent solo show was of the photographic series Oblique at the French Institute of Madrid in November 2011.
Here, Marianne describes how she got into photography and what has influenced her throughout her life:
"For my ninth birthday I received a Kodak instant camera. That little machine seemed to bring together science and magic. I can remember the wonder of standing with the square film between my fingers, watching the faintest shapes become pale yellow ghosts before becoming vivid, if flat, people. It was the opposite of life, where the real washes out and fades to memory.
I was a painter before I was a photographer. I have always enjoyed taking pictures but I only turned to photography professionally when I started experimenting with my husband’s digital point-and-shoot camera on a trip to Japan in 2005. Earlier I had had an old-fashioned sense of the virtuousness of not seeing the results of my picture-taking before a roll of film was developed but while I was photographing the tunnels of the Tokyo Metro, I realized what freedom to learn and to experiment digital technology offered.
I am a self-taught photographer. I have photographic series where the composition of an image remains untouched (as in the Duggal contest photo) but I also create photomontages and lately have started work on photo-based animation."