SN No. 109
Eastern Free State
Spring | 01.11.2026
H:25℃ / L:15℃ - 50% Chances of precipitation.
Introduction - Field Journal.
Hello, and welcome.
First, thank you for taking the time to be here and read these words. I appreciate your curiosity and the time you are willing to share with me as I document this chapter of my life and practice.
My name is Musa N. Nxumalo. I am an artist and photographer from Soweto, Johannesburg, and for most of my adult life, I have understood the world through a camera. After nearly two decades of photographing people, places, and the cultures that shape our lives, I find myself on a different path, learning to slow down, work with my hands, and pay closer attention to the natural world.
This journal is a record of that journey: the places I encounter, the work I do, the things I am learning, and the person I am becoming along the way. It is also an invitation to follow my experiences in the field, including the discoveries, uncertainties, challenges, and small moments that continue to shape my understanding of nature and my place within it.
While this journal is based on my experiences and journey…I hope you find something meaningful for yourself and that, in some way, we can learn alongside one another and create a space for meaningful and progressive conversations about nature in relation to our cultures despite of factors that differentiates and ties us together.
Today marks the beginning of my eighth month of work and residence at Waaipoort Farm, a permaculture centre based in Rosendal, in the eastern Free State of South Africa.
I am particularly excited about this milestone because, I am finally getting to re-introduce my portfolio through this website with a much clearer juxtaposition of different chapters of my practice, and this platform is enabling me a space to layout this expansion with clarity, both visually and conceptually, from The Anthology of Youth to my most recent inquiry into agriculture and natural landscapes, giving me a sense of resolved approach to these ideas, that for a while felt way too disjointed.
Having noted this progress, there is still more work to be done intellectually, artistically and practically as I now and then find myself feeling like a one-year-eight-month-old baby, excited and occasionally overwhelmed by this new journey and concepts of thinking and seeing the world…like Regenerative agriculture, Land stewardship and Agroecology…while on the same breath, having to adjust to coexist in close proximity to nature in a manner that I have never experienced in the past 39 years of my existence.
This journey also marks what I would define as a moment of 360 degree chapter of my practice, that began around 2016, when I ventured into fine-art dealing and exhibition curation as a hands-on inquiry into the business of art, with an intention of gaining practical experience of the transactional relationship between artists, art dealers, logistics companies and collectors.
Approximately six years later, I had developed a hands on experience through working as a commissioned project curator for one of Johannesburg’s emerging art fairs, then I progressed into an in-house curatorial and art-dealing role at one of Africa's oldest commercial galleries based in the same city. I then got presented an opportunity to curate an exhibition by one of South Africa's internationally successful artists in my capacity as an independent curator, which led to a decision to open my own curatorial and art dealing practice, where I mainly focused promoting the work of emerging artists.
The period between 2023 leading to 2025, became a season where I decided to begin the process of circling back into working as an artist and photographer on a full time basis. During this period, I initiated a series of conversations with artists in a form of an audio podcast, which I simply titled Stories By Artists. Today, I understand that particular project as a form of active inquiry through which I sought inspiration from practising artists whose work I admired, both emerging and established. In many ways, these conversations helped me find my way back to my own artistic practice.
In one of the episodes with my dear friend Tom Saater, he gifted me a Fuji GW690II after I expressed my desire to return to photography and my plans to travel across the African continent to explore and document natural landscapes, an interest in natural landscapes that had emerged from a period of deep reflection and a realisation that I had outgrown producing images in the same way I had since 2006, by frequently visiting urban spaces where young people gather and express themselves, such as clubs and music festivals as an example.
I was ready to extend myself personally and artistically by pursuing an interest that had manifested itself in my mind as Overlanding, a concept that at one point, I even attempted to pursue an honours degree at Wits University with hope to unpack and make sense of it academically, however almost six months into the degree, I realised that the only way for me to get closer to nature would be through getting outside, not in my head.
Equipped with a 2002 Jeep Wrangler TJ, a Fuji GW690II and ten rolls of Kentmere 120 film, I began preparing for the journey. I spent my days visualising possible photographs, gathering as much information as I could and figuring out how to assemble additional resources required to pursue the project. Eventually, I began the journey by observing Johannesburg’s Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve from April 2025…
