Obie Oberholzer

Obie Oberholzer self-portrait

Petrus Cornelius Jacobus "Obie" Oberholzer (born 1947) is a South African photographer.

Oberholzer was born on a small farm outside Pretoria, South Africa. He studied graphic design at Stellenbosch University ( South Africa) in the late 1960s, and photography at the Bavarian State Institute of Photography in Munich, Germany, in the early 1970s. He returned to Germany in 1979 for his master's degree (Meister Brief) in photography. In between he worked for the Deutsche Condor Film, as a commercial photographer and as a lecturer at the Durban University of Technology from 1975 to 1983. He has published numerous and popular wine table books documenting his exploits through the African interior.

Oberholzer worked as associate professor of photography in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University. He retired in 2002 and still photographs and writes about southern Africa, producing quirky pictorial travel books. He is a member of the German Photo Agency Laif. He has produced 33 one-man exhibitions in South Africa and 11 one-man exhibitions in Europe and worked for numerous international magazines, including Stern, Geo-Saison, Merian, Codé Nast Traveler, and others.

About himself he writes:“There’s the cloud in the sky, a line in the sand and a little picture in my hand. I am an awkward scholar of sight, a follower of roads and dreams, just a connector of all kinds of lines. I try to find life’s essence in the linear connectedness of things and places and people. I hope that my moments and coincidences will last a little longer than just passing incidents. My work is simply a conglomerate of moments “

Published works

• Ariesfontein to Zuurfontein. A Pictorial Journey (1988)
• Southern Circle. Another Pictorial Journey (1989)
• To Hell n Gone (1991)
• Beyond Bagamoyo. A Journey from Cape to Cairo (1998)
• The Hotazel Years (2000)
• Raconteur Road. Shots into Africa (2002)
• The Hotazel Years. 30 Years of Photographing Southern Africa (2002)
• Round the Bend. Travels Around Southern Africa (2006)
• Long Ago Way. In the Footsteps of Alphons Hustinx (2008)
• Limburgs Momento Mori (2010)
• Diesel and Dust (2012)
• Karoo. Long Time Passing (2014)
• Cooking in the photographer's house – written by Lynn Oberholzer (2015)
• Tokara (Wine and olive estate near Stellenbosch)
• Happysadland 2023
• Going Dutch 2024