Thanks for the great compliments, much appreciated! I will paste the bio I used for an exhibition below, it's a bit bland and sanitised but it gives a good overview. By the time Pinky Promise was finished Pierre was completely financially and emotionally burned out. He just wanted to disappear from his life, hence the 6 month retreat.
"Born in 1971 in Cape Town, Pierre grew up in Klerksdorp, a mining town to the west of Johannesburg. He followed his family’s wishes and graduated from the University of Cape Town with a financial degree and became a Chartered Accountant.
He left South Africa for London in 1996 to take up a position at what was then Chase Manhattan merchant bank. He hated the work and abandoned banking and went to study photography at the London College of Printing. Pierre yearned for home and just after the millennium he returned to South Africa and his work then focused on life in South Africa and on the African continent. Two books, Us (2002) and On Africa Time (2003) were published.
Pierre spent a lot of time in Karatara from 2005 to 2007. Karatara is a tiny settlement on the edge of the Knysna Forest. Originally established to accommodate forestry workers, the population has dwindled as the industry has faded. Those who remain seem somehow lost in time, part of a forgotten era. The Karatara work was exhibited in the US, Europe and a book containing the images, Enter/Exit, was published.
In 2009 Pierre began working on what would be his final body of work, Pinky Promise. The work photographically documented the personal stories of three pedophiles, and five victims of childhood sexual abuse.
The book Pinky Promise, which accompanied an exhibition of the same name was published in 2011.
In November 2012 he began a six month isolated retreat at a remote Buddhist centre. He was meditating for 14 hours a day, eating very sparsely and in the final months had opted to remain silent. Two weeks before the end of the retreat Pierre began to exhibit signs of mental distress and severe paranoia.
During the night of May 1 2013 he fled the retreat, wearing just a pair of shorts, and made his way into the nearby town of Groot Merico. He was walking along the highway when he was killed in a hit and run at 2am on May 2nd at the age of 42.