In an age where just about anyone can be self-styled as a photographer (smartphones and all) – and where all of our perspectives are rightly up for review across social media; photographers like Celeste Jacobs bring the medium to its most simple and tender form. A moment of synchronicity led us to this conversation, starting with her image ‘Gone Fishing’; a crimson and grey plastic trolley, lamenting in the arctic-blue waters of a swimming pool. Shot by Celeste using 35mm, the composition is startling. Simplicity, as Celeste explains to me, is actually one of the most challenging things to do; “My images are the way I see the world. I want to acknowledge the chaos and complexities that exist, but I also want to show that there is room for peace and calm in the world; I try to simplify what I see, and how I capture that. I actually think simplification is really challenging, because we get caught up in the details. My images are a return to origin, visually and thematically.” The contrast of a hardened plastic object (an edifice of human consumption) and the cooling waters might exist, in material terms, as tense oppositions – but this image, through Celeste’s eye, is totally serene. It is to the point, precise – peaceful. 

As a polymathic writer and photographer, Celeste’s background is decidedly contemporary; for many years, she has done many things and doesn’t prescribe to any singular notions of ‘just choose one’, saying, ‘’When I first studied, I did one year of an LLB – I call it my gap year now – and then moved into humanities, so I graduated with a BSocSci degree and then did an honours in organisational psychology. That led to my work in training & development in Human Resources, where I found what I loved which was program writing and development. Then I went into magazines, and then marketing and PR – I’ve done quite a few different things. With that has come strategic content development, like B2B or B2C, across things like art, music, decor, design, social entrepreneurship.” This human-centric, word-focused background and Celeste’s latter venture into image-making sees the synthesis of two things I believe in wholeheartedly; visual story-telling and the written word are irrevocable soulmates – better together, always. As Celeste explains, “I have always been a visual person, and I like the idea of words and images living together – there’s a harmony in that. I had a digital camera, and then it got jacked, and I had thought in 2020 – when we all needed an excuse to get out the house – maybe I should start taking photographs, again. I got my first film camera, after really only using digital or disposables – and started shooting 35mm. Now, I shoot both 35mm and medium format, the latter being a really exciting space to test out different dimensions and proportions.”

'Painted the blue that was left of me red, 2022.'

Film photographers are special beings; the comfort of analogue and the willingness to surrender to a process requires a kind of inner softness that film images tend to reveal – even of the harshest scenes or most intense terrains.  Celeste’s work is proportionally-focused – so much so that her work has been featured twice on cult-website ‘Accidentally Wes Anderson’ – a community-based project that takes submissions from around the globe, of moments captured and seemingly plucked from the iconic filmmaker’s whimsical, pastel-drenched, angularly precise visual worlds. One of them, an image she captured of The African Trading Port building at the Waterfront,  was on show in Seoul and currently showing in Tokyo. Celeste is honing her own kind of mastery of objects and scenery as sites of extracting emotion; ‘The Pause’ features two plastic, pastel chairs meeting a wave on the shoreline, a kind of embrace between them – how is possible to evoke emotion with no emotionally-driven people within the image? Celeste says, “It’s strange because I love people so much, but I really don’t gravitate towards capturing people in my work. I find it’s quite soothing to shoot inanimate things, there’s a learning to that, and more specifically – it feels like a refuge. Objects hold inherent meaning and power to each of us, so they can be even more powerful from a subjective, viewer’s perspective. I always shoot things that are relevant to me, as an escape or solace, and if that becomes something that can be a part of a show, or sold as a print – that’s beautiful, but I want it to remain this precious process that I do quite intimately with myself, and the way I want to convey the reality that I see.” Suddenly, within three years, a whole new craft and community has appeared before Celeste; I ask whether she might consider it as a full-time career, to which she says, ““Photography is another avenue to tell stories, but with writing – I think I always want to have the flexibility to go between the two. I shot the Woolworths X Karabo Poppy campaign last year, and that was amazing – to be able to work in a commercial, or production, environment. I am open to many things. I think the kind of fluidity we have nowadays is incredible, and there’s a few spaces so many of us can find our feet in.”

'Accidentally Wes Anderson.'

Currently, Celeste’s work can be seen at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg, as part of a group show titled ‘Everyday Captures’. The show’s notes read below;  

“In the rush to get from one ‘to do’ to the next, we miss things. We miss the stillness in between checkboxes and obligations and we miss the breathing room that comes with it. We miss the opportunities for laughter and joy. We miss what we need. The Everyday Captures exhibition is an invitation to pause – at a streetlight-light corner store, on the edge of a sunny pool, in the eyes of a stranger – and take it all in.

Inhale levity and irreverence in the work of Themba Mbuyisa, Luske Biermann and Ryan Swart, with snapshots that look in on intimate moments hidden in plain sight. Elu Eboka’s poignant yet approachable portrait of a Queen Mother and Thalente Khomo’s reflection on the beauty of still water will invite you to take a moment for yourself and your people, to remember that sometimes simply being is enough. Ashley Walters’ work celebrates the solace of both a silent street and a stirring samba, reminding us that rest has more than one face. In the studio work of Delmaine Donson and Marta Scavone, the viewer finds tension unravelled in the absence of the expected and proper. Celeste Jacobs’ slices of life make the case for more carefree living, unburdened by the fear of disorder. Each photograph asks us for a tribute of the time we neglect to give ourselves, only to hand it right back to us as a beautiful experience of the many sources, forms, and styles of stillness.”

'To the flame, 2022.'

In this wildly subjective, innately complex existence; photography is a craft that rests in ‘the art of living’ – as Celeste puts it, “I’m really excited to be with a variety of emerging and established photographers in this group show, where we are presenting everyday captures or occurrences – I think that’s what makes this medium so interesting, because there’s a certain presence in capturing a scene, or person, just as it is, in real life. Even if that’s staged or seems to be arranged – that was a real moment in the world that we share.I definitely didn’t ever think that this tentative ‘hobby’ would become so integral to who I am now, and it’s amazing to be a part of this wider community of photographers.”

Lastly, on the idea of what it means to be multidisciplinary in an exceedingly complicated century, Celeste perfectly says. “It’s giving renaissance!” 

Everyday Captures is on at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg until 20 May 2023.

Written by: Holly Beaton