Leon Chauke

Leon Chauke is a self-taught photographer and collage artist that lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. He started his career in advertising as a graphic designer in 2017. In his personal work, he focuses on telling authentic South African stories that are relatable and familiar. His work strives to inspire South Africa and Africa to tell their own stories.

His childhood and upbringing have had a huge influence on his work, he describes growing up in Tembisa as magical and gave him a sense of richness and beauty of the small daily victories and challenges that made his community.

Everybody has a story to tell that is worth capturing and this has shaped my work. Interacting with people through his work gave him a new language to express his emotions - pain, joy, sadness, forgiveness - without having to necessarily articulate those emotions in words.

He is drawn to unearthing the soulfulness in the stories and the opportunity he gets to tell them. He creates work that has a nostalgic feeling, a relatable feeling, a sense of newness and familiarity, striving to create work that allows the viewer to relive moments they have shared with friends, loved ones, and their community.