The late spiritual teacher and psychologist, Ram Dass, was not the first to speak about human beings as vessel for creativity and expression; this idea can be traced to every tradition, indigenous or mystical, but for the purposes of this conversation— I want to refer to his ideas about true creativity arising when we let go of attachment to the self and allow ourselves to be channels for a greater wisdom. One of Ram Dass’ key ideas was that the ego often wants to claim ownership over creativity, but when we release that need, we can become conduits for something much larger. Ram Dass’ broader spiritual and intellectual philosophy, taught to him by his guru Neem Karoli Baba, was a decades-long reckoning with the notion of moving from somebody to nobody to everybody. It goes something along these lines: by loosening the grip of the ego (somebody), we can open ourselves to being an instrument of universal love, wisdom, or creativity (nobody), which then connects us to all beings (everybody). 

I have wanted to meet photographer Anke Loots for sometime, and I hadn’t expected to have the ruminations of eastern traditions percolating in my mind as we got into our interview; but as soon Anke began sharing her perspective, I was brought back to the very clarifying moment I’ve felt many times interviewing creatives and artists. Everybody is a conduit of a higher order— the only difference lies in our awareness of this fact. Anke, as I discover, is deeply connected to life, and armed with photography as her medium— it is her birthright and innate gift for noticing, savouring, and documenting the world’s quiet details, that illuminates the quality of her work for which she is known and loved. 

Furrow detail images by Anke Loots 

“I will say my genesis definitely started when I was young,” Anke shares, “But I feel like it was very much ignited when I moved here 14 years ago after school. I went to Red & Yellow and studied art direction there, and that’s when I really fell in love with photography. I’d always been using cell phones to take pictures of my friends at school, making Facebook posts and obsessing over captions. It was methodical for me, something I did compulsively. But when I started studying and became more serious about it, I realised—this is what I really want to do.” Anke has been in the CEC office for a few minutes, and she’s already noticed two different compositions that she’s snapped on her phone; of light interacting with objects, and the finer points and lines present in the room. Anke’s eye for perception is innate.  

Reflecting on why photography has always felt like her natural path, she explains, “It’s definitely got to do with people, but I feel like it goes deeper than that. It’s almost a documentation of life. I feel an urge to do that. Maybe that’s why I was already doing it as a kid with my phone—there’s this compulsion to document everything. What really attracts me about photography is how you can use light, shapes, and textures to manipulate something into something emotional. That’s what draws me in—using many different elements to create a moment. I could be looking at a cabinet and a plant in beautiful lighting, and I can’t help but take a picture. It’s about that intersection of elements.”

With an expansive career that has spanned 12 years, Anke’s work has evolved, yet her core sensibilities remain intact. There is a decided richness that bursts out from her images: coupled with a serenity, and a ‘matter of factness’: no matter how arranged or staged any one of her scenes may be. “Honestly, I would say that I’m still drawn to the same things,” Anke reflects, “Abstraction has always fascinated me. As cliché as it sounds, when I was a teenager, I was obsessed with Dalí. Even today, I find myself drawn to photographers like Harley Weir—people whose work has a moody, interpretative quality, even if it’s clearly a fashion image or a still life. There’s always something emotive about it. I think I’ve always been interested in the oscillation of humans, our shadow and light. That theme runs through everything I do, not just in photography. I’m fascinated by the psyche—what people see, what they perceive. Maybe that’s why I love abstraction, because things can be read in so many ways.” Unconstrained by the boundaries of realism, Anke’s stylistic approach uncovers the liminality between imagination and perception; simultaneously ephemeral and tangible. 

Anke shares that her first and foremost embrace in her work is that of the tension between opposites, as she sees it as integral to the human experience. “We move between those lines constantly—between clarity and abstraction, between shadow and light. That tension defines us. And when you realise they’re just two sides of the same thing, that’s where transformation happens. If you can embrace that in your work, it becomes something powerful.”

Most recently, Anke’s collaboration with Wanda Lephoto and Oratile Moh for Wanda’s eponymous label has come out as one of the strongest documentations of fashion and people that I’ve ever seen. The campaign, Fall/Winter 2025 ‘Spirits’, showcases some of South Africa’s deepest thinkers and creators in fashion, with each person also being instrumental to Wanda Lepotho’s community at large. From Jackie May, to Masego Morgan, to Sindiso Khumalo and many more; Anke’s image-making is turned on fully by the array of colours, textures and narratives uncovered by their collaboration. Anke notes that, “it took us like three months to make, so it was a long time that we did it. We kind of slotted it in where we could shoot it.” The striking moment, as Anke recalls, was the iconic house that anchored the campaign’s sentiments. “Grace gave us a location. Four years ago she posted a picture of this house and I saw this house and I was like, one day I’m going to shoot this house. When we were standing in front of that house, I remember Wanda and I looking at each other and we were just like, okay, this is the project, like we’re fully in this project now,” and that, “Wanda trusting me and us having a very similar way of thinking about the world and allowing ourselves time to create the project really made for something where we could both arrive in our creativity, and capture it, and document it. It’s a very special relationship.”

Furrow detail images by Anke Loots 

Anke is very clear on the current moment that we’re living in— and I desperately needed the reminder, amidst all the echo chambers of horror that seemingly bombard us. “We’re really moving into an age now, I mean astrologically,” Anke emphasises, “we’re moving into the age of Aquarius where everybody is just going to be expressing themselves freely. I honestly feel like we can feel it all around from everybody. Everyone’s just like, fuck it, I’m just going to make it, I’m just going to do this, and it’s just magic to see.”

I ask Anke about the way in which she approaches her creative work, and Anke shares that it is her respect for the somatic and the bodily that keeps her attuned, “I’ve been doing yoga practice. I have my 500-hour yoga teacher training. I don’t teach or anything, but I’ve had one teacher for 10 years, and she shows me all these crazy tricks to keep herself young so that she can practice till she’s 90,” and that as an example of the way in which the world is moving forward, “I was watching FKA Twigs’ whole album roll out, and she just starts doing like limb swings. It’s a yoga technique, but now she’s in the vibe, in the mood. That for me is the most exciting thing about everything – how we’re integrating all of our shadow and practices into one thing. It’s so beautiful. For me, just seeing someone like that, being like, ‘Oh yeah, I have to slap my body to ground myself’ – and that’s part of an album roll-out. That’s crazy. It wouldn’t have been normal 10 years ago. But now everyone’s like, oh yeah, I need that to tether myself.”

“Creativity is my lifeline. If it’s not there, I can’t… I’ve tried having a job, I’ve tried working at an agency—I come from an advertising background. But my body gets physically ill. There’s a drive in me that has to make stuff on my terms.” For Anke, creativity is a necessity, the thing that keeps her tethered to this world. Over the years, she’s navigated the delicate balance between creative freedom and financial security, understanding that sustainability is just as crucial as inspiration. “I’ve managed to find a good balance where I’ve worked harder,” she says, “but there’s always been something in the background paying my bills, even if it’s not exactly what I love. It’s always been important to have some form of security. If you’re starting out, make sure you have a stream of income so that you’re not reliant on your creativity or your photography or painting to pay your bills. Otherwise, you’re going to start hating it. You’re going to say yes to things you wouldn’t necessarily say yes to, and that’s when things stop being free.”

Anke emphasises that while it’s possible to make a living from creativity, the path is rarely immediate or linear. She recalls a lesson from FKA Twigs, whose career took time to take off, “She keeps coming up!” Anke exclaims, “but I remember FKA Twigs talking about how she didn’t make money from her music at first. She was still doing other things like directing her own Facebook page while she was pushing her creative projects. It was the expression that mattered, and the money followed.”

In a creative landscape often dictated by commercial pressures, Anke Loots stands as a reminder that true artistry thrives when nurtured on its own terms—rooted in passion, sustained by pragmatism, and defined by an unwavering commitment to the work itself, “I love photography because it’s something you can control so much. You can contain it, capture it, keep it, look at it, and go back to it. You can tell any version of it that you want.”

Spirits campaign for Wanda Lephoto, Photographed by Anke Loots, Styled by Wanda Lephoto and Oratile Moh

Anke’s recent launch of Furrow, her highly anticipated self-published zine, is an inquiry in uncovering the microcosmic and macrocosmic similarities that underpin reality: that essentially, the reverbating atoms that make up all of life, are more pronounced when we simply look closer and make the connection. On the inspiration behind the concept, Anke shares that “Furrow has been very important for me to make. I feel like we’ve all been a bit stuck in a rut since 2020, processing things as a group, and now it feels like people are moving again. I’ve been sitting on this project for a year, busy with commercial work and other things, but I had to find the time to do it. It was inspired in 2018 when I was flying over farmlands that looked like patterns on the earth. I started taking pictures on my phone, but I couldn’t capture the perspective I wanted, so I started looking at how we interact with agriculture and land. It all came down to this need to document how we create patterns in everyday life.”

“Furrow is a multimedia project documenting how we create patterns—whether digitally, on land, on our bodies, or in our relationships. It’s a celebration of those organic patterns we make in the world around us. The concept itself is simple, but it’s a celebration of the richness of reality.” In the spirit abstraction that remains central to Anke’s perspective, Furrow is motivated by the balance between the organic and the man-made that we so often forget are inseparable from one another. Anke’s farmlands demonstrate that, when one scales out, the natural forms we create become their own organic thing, mimicking how people live. Some are structured, others are more loose and organic, and there’s a poetic freedom in how they evolve; despite any control we think we have.

“This year has been so busy, but in a good way. I feel like there’s a lot of momentum in my life and in the world. Creatively, I’m feeling super inspired musically and in art. I’ve just been keeping my head down and making my things. It feels like there’s a shift happening, and I’m just in that space where I have to make things now—it’s just how it is.” For Anke, the act of creating is driven by an undeniable pull toward expression and discovery. I note to Anke that throughout our conversation, I keep thinking about how deeply connected to life she is, to which Anke says,“when I’m observing life, I see it in the small, everyday moments. That’s what inspires me most—witnessing the energy of life.”

“Photography is really my way of sharing life. It’s the medium I choose, but what I feel deeply connected to is life itself. It’s taken me years to get here, but now I really see what it’s about—how precious it is, and how important it is to capture and document it. That’s what we’re here to do: to experience ourselves through creating and documenting it for each other.” This awareness of life’s preciousness also informs Anke’s philosophy on personal expression. She believes that to truly contribute to the world, we must first connect with ourselves, and that her guiding vision is “that it’s really important for us to learn how to connect with ourselves so that we can truly express ourselves properly on this planet. I feel like we’re all so repressed in so many ways, and it’s detrimental if we don’t start connecting with ourselves now. For me, the most important thing is how I connect to myself every day before I interact with the world. I don’t want to be this seeping bubble influenced by everything around me—I want to contribute from my greatest essence, from who I truly am.”

As we end off the our conversation, the topic of Vipassana comes up; I have been terrible with a mediation practice, and the 10 day silent, meditative retreat of Vipassana has been calling my name again (I did it, imbibed by the hubris of youth, at 21 years old), to which Anke says, “I go every year. I’ve been going for ten years, except during COVID. It’s the thing that keeps me the most sane in this world—it’s like a reset every year. It helps me remember who I am without all the distractions. It’s incredible to just be there, away from everything, and reconnect with yourself.” Suddenly, all of the serenity emanating from Anke makes perfect sense. Anke’s practices, whether spiritual, creative — or simply her practice of life itself, is an embodied wisdom on the art of seeing and being in this world. “My yoga teacher, Tamsin, is incredible. What I love about her is that she’s so grounded in the material world—she’ll have a glass of champagne—but her yoga practice is the most important thing in her life. It’s that balance of being fully present in the world while also making time to sit in quiet and connect with ourselves. We need to make this a priority. It doesn’t have to be yoga or meditation—it could be something as simple as a walk along the promenade. We all need to find our way to connect to ourselves, but that connection should be the main priority.” To be in the world, but not of it — as the saying goes.

Written by Holly Beaton

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