Richard Ehrlich, a surgeon-turned-photographer, discusses his travels to and photography of Namibia.
By Candice Arciaga / Special to The Malibu Times
In the country of Namibia on the southwest coast of Africa, there is a place where the “bosses” live, Malibu resident Richard Ehrlich said. An area that is on high security because of its forbidden diamond mines, and with a no-tolerance rule for theft or trespassing, one doesn’t want to just casually wander into this tropical sand-invaded place owned by the Namibian government and the De Beers diamond corporation.
Ehrlich, a surgeon-turned-photographer, was, however, granted permission from the government to enter this “forbidden area” (as he calls it), and he documented his trip of these deserted fields of Africa in his photographic book, “Namibia.”
He will discuss his experiences and sign copies of “Namibia” at Diesel, A Bookstore on Sunday.
Ehrlich, who has been a surgeon at UCLA Medical Center since 1971, took up photography, professionally, about eight years ago.
“I did it as a kid,” he said, “but it became a serious endeavor at a professional standpoint.”
He had heard about Namibia through an acquaintance, and sought it out himself to capture and share the isolated, desert area with the public. In no danger whatsoever, he said, Ehrlich camped out in the deserted sand fields of Namibia, and concentrated his photographs on an abandoned diamond mine and the deserted mining village.
Photos featured in “Namibia” grasp the beauty of colorfully painted, ransacked homes, with sand filling doorways and rooms, as well as the red sand found in landscape shots. The photographs from the book are exhibited at museums and galleries across the nation, including the Craig Krull Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.
“Namibia [was] colonized by the Germans in the early 1900s, [who discovered] diamonds in 1907,” Ehrlich explained, and “a diamond stampede occurred much like the Gold Rush. People came from all over the world to mine the diamond mines; there wasn’t a singe grain that wasn’t a source of diamonds.
“[Namibia was] taken over by South Africa,” he continued, “planned houses were implemented, and the ‘bosses’ who were in the diamond business were running the operation. Those houses were built in the early 1900s and are still standing today, in bad repair, but captivating nonetheless in the middle of the desert.”
Namibia, with the unique characteristic of its red sand, is known to be one of the most picturesque places in the world. “Very few people know about it because it’s in a bizarre location,” Ehrlich said.
Painters such as Cezanne, Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn influence Ehrlich’s photography work. Tony Berlant, an American painter whose recent exhibition “SoCal: Southern California Art of the 1960s and ’70s,” was featured at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2007, finds Ehrlich’s work to be “what you see is who you are.
“He has emerged his artistic sensitivity with the precision of his medical photography,” Berlant states on Ehrlich’s Web site, “yielding visual images that are technically precise, yet soaringly evocative in content.”
“Medicine is my profession, photography has turned into a profession to express more of my artistic passions,” Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich will appear at Diesel, A Bookstore on Sunday at 3 p.m. More information can be obtained by calling 310.456.9961.