Garth Meyer is a photographer and filmmaker that lives in South Africa. He holds a Photography Technician Diploma, an Advanced Diploma in Film & Television Production Techniques, a BAFA Honors and a MFA (2019) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT. He is part of The African Film Library, and in 2012, he was published in the book South African Cinema 1896 – 2010 by Dr. Martin Botha. The book focuses on the many highly creative uses of cinematic form, style, and genre set against South Africa’s complex and often turbulent social and political landscape. In the same year he took part in the group exhibition Environment and Object: Recent African Art at the Frances Young Tang Museum in New York. In 2013 he was nominated for the Prix Pictet Global Award in Photography and Sustainability. He was part of the Johannesburg Art Fair (2016) and Cape Town Art Fair with Warren Editions (2017, 2018). In 2019 he was awarded the Tierney Fellowship Award for Photography representing UCT. His MFA dissertation, of still and moving images, documented the political ecology of primary hardwood forests along the imaginary line of the equator in Africa, South East Asia and South America. In 2021 Barnard Gallery and Foto Black Box presented his solo exhibition LINE. In 2021-2022 Meyer taught photography at the Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography. His most recent thematic exploration Barrier investigates a re-imagination and narrative shift of how we as societies consider gender borders. The photograph and object become counter- arguments, metaphors, allegories, cultural indexes and symbols of the complexities of fragility and transgression against the queer body. In 2024 Meyer was a part of the Investec Art Fair in Cape Town. Currently he is writing an original screenplay titled Catcher which explores the history of photography and addiction.
