Tremayne Ward-Smith is a South African director and photographer born and raised in Johannesburg. His work continually shifts between exploring, observing and examining everyday banalities and extended longterm series that are extensively researched and sought out. These projects look to explore offbeat social and environmental foci that either lack a visual narrative, are in subtle exclusion of representation or are simply regarded as ordinary everyday life. As a broadening body of work, each theme is tethered to an interconnected study of the aesthetics and abstractions of the human condition, inextricably tied to the natural world and the collateral vulnerability of our planet. It is a work of human authorship looking at the unobstructed agency of our species utilising an aesthetic and process that aims at simplicity. The work acknowledges its inconclusive nature and encourages further engagement and expression- both visceral and considered. For his stills series, Ward-Smith uses a camera system that he feels represents the raw nature of the work without embellishing in an over-commercialised digital language. The camera files are often flawed and the sensor technology is outdated and limiting. He sees this as an extension of broader ideas connected to the tools he has chosen, in a world that is ultra focussed on telescopic technological expansion and superiority.
Tremayne Ward-Smith holds an honours degree in documentary, visual arts and media studies from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He further completed his undergraduate degree in Archaeology at the same university and has since worked in community radio, television and in the commercial stills and film industry. He continues to travel extensively throughout Southern Africa and is based in Cape Town.