“In the end there was just me” We’re always on our journey home. Each of us has to take our own steps. I invite you to see what I’ve seen & learnt from nature over the past 44 years.
Register here and I’ll send you part 1 of my How to be Human video series & you can join Conversations with Marlene to discuss them.
Learn to be still in the eye of the storm, creating a state of grace to live by in all parts of our lives. When: Saturday 17th February 2024, 2.30pm SA | 12.30pm UK | 7.30am EST Online workshop (2.5 hours)
Access your internal strength and personal truth
Still your mind and experience inner peace
Unlock the mystery of remembering who you truly are
“Being able to connect with the very core of ourselves, where nothing can take us off our centre, helps us ride the waves and dance with life.” Marlene
“Marlene has helped me evolve as an individual. I learnt to manage my fears and learnt a lot about myself and the world. Marlene is an amazing mentor and teacher.” Roopa, South Africa
Having suffered years of anxiety, living with draining and tiring situations, I’ve learnt to be courageous, finding how to tap into my inner strength, peace and resources at any moment in time.
20 Years ago, I had a life-threatening illness that took me on a new path of understanding that there is so much more to life than we ever imagined or been taught. By learning how to manage ourselves in new ways enables us to respond to situations maintaining our personal strength and flow.
During our time together we will:
Quieten the mind
Become aware of the messages our bodies and emotions give us
Learn to create our own space of grace
No previous experience or knowledge necessary. Bring your open heart and mind and let’s explore nature’s voice together. Register here: https://thevoiceofnature.net/invitation/
Photographing the beauty of nature for the past 44 years, East London-based fine art photographer
Marlene Neumann is showcasing more than 150 images in her latest exhibition titled Full Circle.
Having opened on November 3, the exhibition, run in conjunction with the Ann Bryant Art Gallery, takes place at Neumann’s Vincent-based Centre for Photography and Light.
While full circle can mean a variety of things to different people, for Neumann, 58, this exhibition represents the cycle of her life.
Inspired by “Everything in nature works in cycles, everything goes full circle and so do we,” said Neumann.
“I can feel myself getting older, and slowing down a bit, I can feel my life coming full cycle.
“Right now in my world I’ve been working with an editor in UK and have been publishing books.
“The most recent is titled A Dance with Life and my next one should be out in February. So all my work will be in books now and this is partly where the inspiration for putting together this exhibition comes from,” she explained.
Featuring photographs from the beginning of her career to her latest work, the exhibition boasts the wonders Neumann has had the pleasure of capturing over the years.
“The photographs are predominantly from South Africa but also from Namibia, Paris, Florence and other travels.
“It’s photographs taken in the moment. Throughout my career I’ve photographed things that others didn’t see,” Neumann said.
“I think people miss a lot of life because they’re not looking. These pictures showcase nature and the land we walk, mother Earth in a way, I think, many may not have looked at it before.
“On show will be some of my earliest original photographs using my unique black and white darkroom process which creates one of a kind fine art photographs.
“Essentially the exhibition is inspired by everything that I’ve done, with a clear emphasis on nature.”
“You’ll be taken on a journey through the joy of soul photography, seeing the beauty of the rhythm of life through nature.”
Popular works from her darkroom collection including Witsand, Journey Home, Roadside Baobab,
Downstairs Door to Forest Walk and The Wisdom of the Elephants will also be on display.
“There will be a mixture of dark room and digital work as well. In a sense that is also like a full circle process to me.”
She said putting this collection together had been a nostalgic process.
“I would often sit on the floor while preparing for the exhibition and not get any work done,” she quipped
“I’d just sit remembering the moments when I took and produced these images.
“It’s been a very soulful experience, putting this altogether. I see this exhibition as a celebration of my life as a photographer, and why not do it while I’m still here.
“And even though we don’t live forever, my photographs and books will. And that is really wonderful.
“I remember when I was younger I always wanted everyone to own one of my images.
“And now knowing that my photographs are all over the world, knowing that many who have left the
Eastern Cape or South Africa have one of my photographs to remind them of home brings me so much joy.”
She said she hoped all who visited the exhibition would feel a sense of connection to nature.
“Photography is magic to me, you capture a split second. I hope people feel that.
“I hope they leave with a heart that’s filled up. And that they feel that reconnection to nature, feel a compassion for nature.
“There is a big variety of images on show and I hope people take time and sit and go through them and reflect.”
The exhibition runs until November 10 from 10am-3pm at the Marlene Neumann Centre for Photography and Light at 8 Kent Road, Vincent.
Established Eastern Cape fine art photographer Marlene Neumann held an exclusive reading in Walmer of her recently launched book, A Dance with Life.
The event at Fogarty’s Bookshop gave a remarkable insight into her unique journey of dabbling in and developing a black-and-white darkroom process.
With an enthralled audience sitting back and eager to listen, the reading on Thursday offered key lessons to inspire new thinking based on nature and spirituality.
The East London inspirational speaker shared her personal and deeply philosophical offering on her first stop of a book tour in the city.
A donation drive added extra excitement to the evening as guests donated dog food in large quantities for charitable aid in Gqeberha.
The nature photography vet of 40 years, whose previous experience includes heading the art and design department at an SA Technikon, said people yearned for new experiences.
“The response from Gqeberha was beautiful and overwhelming,” Neumann said.
“People are hungry for this kind of vulnerability and rawness, and to bring it into their daily lives by opening themselves up to a new way of living.
“Many said they wanted me to come back and hold a few workshops.”
Traumatic and life-threatening circumstances in her life awakened in Neumann the importance of savouring each moment.
This deep appreciation through her own experiences allowed the audience to be transported on a gentle journey of self-understanding.
“This is what we need in society — just how to go forward in a new way of being,” she said after launching A Dance with Life, her third book, three months ago.
“A Dance with Life, like [the previous two books], is based around my photographs and, more specifically, about peeling back the layers of our own emotions through the photographs.
“It’s another way of being and feeling and giving people permission to be vulnerable.
“Busy, ordinary people want to learn a new way of life and it is time.”
On the donations, which brought in more than 100kg of feed which Save-A-Pet in Greenbushes will distribute at an informal settlement in Kuyga, Neumann expressed her keen love for dogs.
This, she said, was a testament to a project she runs focusing on sterilisation in East London’s informal settlement areas.
“The Buckaroo Sterilisation Drive serves as a fundraising and awareness initiative primarily focused on the welfare of animals.
“In the last five years, I have had 2,500 dogs sterilised by managing to get international funding.
“Wherever I go for the book readings, I will always collect dog food for a local dog charity.”
We often meet our life teachers in unexpected ways. So it was for me when I met Marlene Neumann, Master Fine Art Photographer, spiritual teacher and the author of A Dance with Life at her Centre for Photography & Light, which happens to be next door to where my brother lives in the suburb of Vincent, East London.
As a photographer since the age of fourteen, Marlene dedicated her life to this art. She developed her skills to become one of the best fine art photographers in South Africa and gained international recognition for inventing her unique black-and-white alternative darkroom process. Through her photography, she found her connection with nature and the stillness within. Today, her photographs, inspirational talks, and creativity workshops have the power to shake and move an audience emotionally.
In her book A Dance with Life, she invites the reader to join her in a dance to nature’s rhythm. As Marlene writes in her introduction, the book tells of how she dances with life – sometimes waltzing, other times fox trotting or doing hip-hop, or just sitting out and watching others dance on some days. She uses beautiful images in the book to reflect the various insights nature has revealed to her as she dances through her life, allowing her readers to explore their own lives in order to heal and transform.
Reading her book was like a much-needed refresher course, confirming all the principles of my own belief system but packaged visually in a new way that is enticing, easy to read, and easy to understand.
This autobiographical compilation of her personal journey (or dance) through life is supported and illustrated by her photographic images (38 breathtakingly beautiful works) and filled with philosophical insights and valuable life lessons. I gobbled it up, savouring some passages like a treasured sweet in my cheek and returning to some to satisfy a craving, repeatedly rereading and reviewing her wise insights.
As Marlene rightfully says, we spend our lives searching for things outside ourselves to complete or make us happy, while all we need is to connect to what is inside us. In A Dance with Life, she not only shares the lessons she has learnt on her own journey through hardships and sorrow but also offers sage advice on how, by changing one’s focus, you can find freedom and, with that, the rhythm to dance with life.
I loved this book so much, and while I would like to share it with many others, I would also like to keep it close so I can revisit it often.
A morning spent with the white lions at Inkwenkwezi. Graham and I have been friends for 35 years. An incredible experience ✨️such a privilege to have this on our doorstep in East London ❤️
Join Marlene for a 3.5 Hour Listening to the Voice of Nature – (guided Walk in Nature).
Allow Marlene to share with you how extraordinary the ordinary is unleashing the magic and mystery of life in the forest. Come and Immerse yourself in the silent miracle of Mother Nature, taking some peaceful time out for yourself.
Marlene will be guiding 8 beautiful Nature lovers into the gorgeous Nahoon Nature Reserve in East London.
What to expect : * Mindful walk and talk using all of your senses. * Gentle guidance on how to see Light, Shapes and Colours. * Listening to the stillness of the trees. Bring silence back into our lives. * Honouring Mother Earth
What to Bring : * Loose comfortable warm clothes that you can peel off. * Backpack with a bottle of water / light lunch / Flask of tea * Your phone or camera.
Cost – R300 | Date / Time : 24th June – 10am – 1:30 pm (fully booked) Cost – R300 | Date / Time : 1 July – 10am – 1:30 pm Limited to 8 Nature lovers, who want to learn to appreciate the stillness of Nature and good company.
I invite you to step into a state of deep reflection into your own world. Many of us are scared and struggle to fit in, conforming to follow what society tells us to do. Throughout this book you will be inspired to discover your own steps to dance with life and re-connect to your true nature – the jewel that is hidden within each of us – So you can shine your light and start living your best life !
Begin the process by asking yourself “What if our purpose as humans is to dance to nature’s rhythm, to soar like eagles and to truly experience everything that life brings us?”
Come and experience some YOU TIME before you get sucked right back in…
Learning how to BE is our natural state without doing too much and yet accomplishing more than ever before.
This Talk is for everyone, Photographers, Teachers, Business people, anyone that is needing to Learn how to BE in a world that has gone MAD.
“We all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just being.” – Eckhart Tolle
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometime a wonderful stroke of luck” – Dalai Lama
Master Fine Art Photographer Marlene Neumann shares 2 hours with you exploring what it means to wake up… seats are limited.
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Yin and Yang
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Monthly one on one 60 minute consultation with Marlene valued at R600.
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