Margaret Courtney-Clarke b. 1949, Swakopmund, Namibia. Worked and lived in Rome, Italy and New York, USA (1972-2009) Currently lives and works in Swakopmund, Namibia Margaret Courtney-Clarke is a photographer whose aim is to bring historically situated socio-political injustices to light, educate (where governments and press have failed), and celebrate the resilience and creative impulse in the practices of women in the African context. Believing in ongoing relational conversations her work now focuses on the engagement with a people and environment in crisis in her home country of Namibia. Courtney-Clarke 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. Author of 10 books Courtney-Clarke’s work has received regular acclaim. Cry Sadness into the Coming Rain received a number of nominations and awards including, the 2018 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award (longlisted), in London, UK; and the silver award from Deutscher Fotobuchpreis, Stuttgart, Germany; The 16th Julia Margaret Cameron Award (Worldwide Photo) “Women Seen by Women”, Spain (2021) and in 2022 Courtney-Clarke received the Lens Culture Critics Choice award for her series Caged, from the Namib Desert. In the same year British Journal of Photography and 1854, Decade of Change 2022, single image winner for Singing the Rain. In 2019 she was selected for the Prix Pictet global award in photography and sustainability - the exhibition HOPE, toured globally with exhibitions in London, Tokyo, Zurich, Moscow, Verona, Dublin and Shanghai amongst others. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Contemporary African Photography Prize (CAP) - and was nominated again in 2020. For her portfolio A Lifelong Obsession with Finding Shelter in New York City, USA she received the Photo District News (PDN) Award in 2018 and she was nominated for the 2015 Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) Award for her series On Borrowed Time in Paris, France. This recognition has led to invitations for exhibitions which include curator Ekow Eshun’s Face to Face, on public display in King's Cross Tunnel in London (2020) & Guernsey Photo Festival, U.K. (2021); Women on Women: Relationships, Identity and Power Explored Through Photography, curated by Robert Taylor, Oxford Outdoor Photo, London (2021) and Crossing Night: Regional Identities x Global Context, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, USA.(2019); North East South West: Over the Edge curated by Francesco Finotto, Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, San Donà di Piave, Venice, Italy (2022) In 2018 the Royal Photographic Society names her as one of The Hundred Heroines. In 2021, Courtney-Clarke presented a solo exhibition When Tears Don’t Matter at !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre in Yzerfontein, South Africa. Her forthcoming book of the material therein documenting the precarious lives of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert will be available Spring of 2026 (Steidl.de) In 2024 her solo ‘Dust on the Wind’ was commissioned by Francisco Carolinum, OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Linz, Austria; in November 2025 her solo exhibition ‘Geographies of Drought’ opened at the Zephyr REM – Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany.