Gille de Vlieg
Gille de Vlieg, born Gillian Ruth Hemson on 26 July 1940 in Plymouth, England, grew up in South Africa after her family moved there when she was three. She trained as a nurse in 1958 and later lived in London. She was married twice and had children, Ruth and Katherine (Katherine died in infancy). She and her second husband, Rob de Vlieg, returned to Johannesburg.
In 1982 she started volunteering with the Black Sash and soon joined its regional committee as vice-chair. During the mid-1980s she connected with anti-apartheid activities in Tembisa and began to take an interest in photography as a form of protest. When Paul Weinberg invited her to join the Afrapix photographers’ collective, she asked to be a photographer, not just a secretary. She learned from Weinberg and Cedric Nunn and realized photography could help push for change.
Her work focused on life in rural areas and townships, land removals, gender and daily life, and anti-apartheid campaigns such as the UDF, the End Conscription Campaign, and protests against the death penalty. She documented police violence, funerals, and social issues like street children and homelessness. Because it was illegal for many white people to enter black townships, she sometimes used a pretext to gain access. Her Johannesburg home also served as a safe place for anti-apartheid activists.
In June 1986 she was arrested after a raid on her house and detained for 37 days. She later lived on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast. Her photographic collection includes 581 black-and-white images and is archived online in the South African History Archive. She is one of two women featured in Beyond the Barricades. In 2014 she was named a finalist for the Mbokodo Awards. Her photos were published in newspapers, magazines and books around the world, and she spoke about wanting to show an alternative view of South Africa, not the one seen on TV at the time.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:23 (CET).