Zak van Biljon is a landscape and fine art photographer. He was born in South Africa and is based in Switzerland. He has been shooting since 1998.
He studied at the Cape Town School of Photography, where he focused on black-and-white printing, and at the National College of Photography in Pretoria. In 2020 he took a MoMA course, Seeing Through Photographs.
He works with near-infrared photography. The technique records light just beyond what the human eye can see. Plants reflect this light strongly, and in his pictures it turns pink, red and violet. He uses Kodak Aerochrome film and modified digital cameras.
His book Modernising Nature was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2025. It shows the Swiss Alps in near-infrared. It has 168 pages and 83 color illustrations. The texts are by Gwendolyn Fässler and Lukas Tonetto. Max Quecke designed the book.
He started the project at a time when he did a lot of commercial work. He wanted to make something personal. On his website he says that color is more than light. For him, it is language.
