biography

Hywell Waters is an award-winning, international advertising and documentary photographer. Currently based in Dubai, he works on projects and campaigns around the world. He has completed campaigns for top global clients such as Adidas, Barclays, Coca Cola, Ford, HSBC, Johnson&Johnson, McDonalds, Microsoft, Pepsi, Sony and Toyota. His work has been published in numerous leading magazines and newspapers across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. Born and raised in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, on a small farm at the base of the Bvumba Mountains, the beauty of Africa and its people continues to inspire Hywell’s documentary work. In 2005, he collaborated with the UK-based Beit Trust to develop For the Benefit of the People – a photography book documenting welfare programs across Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Hywell was selected for the International Prize for Young Photojournalists (1999) and was awarded the Young African Photographer Award at Mali’s Recontres de la Photographie Africaine (2001).

He was also selected as one of twelve photographers from around the world to participate in the World Press Masterclass held in the Netherlands in 2000.

His work was featured in Phaidon’s BLINK: 100 Contemporary Photographers from around the World. He has exhibited extensively in both group and solo exhibitions in Algiers, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bamako, Berlin, Dubai, Honfleur, London, Milan, Paris, Rotterdam and various cities in South Africa.

Hywell attended the prestigious Rhodes University in South Africa, where he completed a Master’s of Fine Art Photography, with Distinction. He was fortunate enough to receive a number of scholarships and bursaries, including the Rhodes Masters Scholarship, the Raymond Pullen Scholarship for the Arts and the AGFA Masters and ATS bursaries.