Creative Cape Town

Garth Stead, an award winning photographer and educator, was found dead yesterday in his Woodstock home.  Garth was responsible for the evocative photos of slavery, ghostly set in the contemporary city, which were used extensively in the recent Creative Cape Town Annual and Explore Creative Cape Town map.  Garth worked as picture editor of Foto24 one of Media24’s photographic departments.  He served as a photographer for Cape Times and Die Burger.  He is widely regarded as one of the country’s finest photo-journalists.  He was the winner of the acclaimed Fuji Press Award. As a trainer he had a unique skill and an ability to train youth at risk in ways that transformed them and empowered them to transform the world in turn though their image making.  The project he helped form – Icon Images School of Photography to train the under privileged and marginalised.  He has done extensive work with District Six Museum and was a photographer who was keenly aware of the importance of history and identity in image making.  His passing leaves a massive void in our local creative community.