The Herder Boys of Lesotho

Tom Oldham first visited in 2009, while working on a project for NGO Riders for Health, on a whistle-stop shoot travelling through this mountainous kingdom. On the trip he'd seen the herder boys working and could immediately see a story that he couldn’t shake the image of - their silhouettes against the sky, these icons of Lesotho wrapped in the woollen blankets that provide their only protection from an intense sun or a brutal winter. The herder boys work astonishingly hard, for very low pay, in the toughest conditions imaginable. It is the only option available to some, who often have very little formal education and can enter into this employment from early childhood. In November 2016, he was able to return to Lesotho to shoot these portraits and with some valuable assistance from the team at Riders he came home with some very special new work.

The exhibition has been supported by Hasselblad and it has been printed and framed by Metro Imaging.