Leeya Hendricks
Leeya Hendricks
Artistst Biography
Leeya Hendricks grew up in a town called Bosmont, west of Johannesburg. She attended the Deutsche Schule zu Johannesburg (The German School), after having been selected to participate in a one year programme for higher academic scholars from local schools and was given the opportunity to succeed in this programme to be a full time student at the private school, DSJ, from grade 4.
Attending the Deutsche Schule allowed her several opportunities, learning German was one of them and being able to do art as a matric subject was another, which has moulded her into who she is today. The DSJ allowed her to define herself, become her own, and equipped her with tools to be responsible, independent, confident and open minded. It was during high school in grade 8 that she realised her skills, abilities and passion for art. She took art as a matric subject and it was with this that she decided to pursue a BA Undergraduate Honours in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is grateful for her parents who allowed her to follow her dreams and supported her in her choice to follow something different to the usual expected paths.
She majored in photography and fell in love with photography in her first year of university where she worked with pinhole photography. She enjoyed the idea of being able to capture a still moment in time and how light defines the image that is framed. “Photography is a complex medium. It holds a mechanical process of capturing data in different forms which are linked to notions of truths and reality, as well as that of fiction and can form rendered truths and realities into that which is not always true.”
She exhibited at various exhibitions as a student and participated in the Absa L’ Atelier in 2006, where she sold her first photographic image. She went on to study a Postgraduate BA Honours degree in Brand and Marketing Leadership at the Vega School of Brand Communications where she aimed to marry creative and strategy to be able to market photography and the up and coming photographer in future.
Today she still focuses on photography as her passion and looks at the world through a lens with her devotion for travel and how being well travelled and exposed to the world, various cultures, races, religions and dynamic people, changes your way of thinking and allows one to be open minded and more tolerant of diversity and difference.
She also believes that brand marketing lends itself well to photography as they are both focused on conveying and communicating a message and today finds herself as an expert in communications working within the corporate marketing and communcations industry. She is a thinker, creator and explorer and she loves what she does as she is able to be free and creative, while having fun and is also able to help others as she has also succeeded in achieving her goal of being able to create a platform for young photographers to be able to market their work and build their brand with her years of experience in marketing.
She believes that it is important to see beyond the camera as a mechanism of truth, when capturing a scene of “reality” and believes that every photograph has a meaning, a hidden message and a story to tell. A photograph is a portrayal, its a representation, its an interpretation and is a perception of the scene it aims to capture from the artists eye.