ANDRES KOSSOWSKI

A Note About My Father – Andres (Andrzej) Kossowski (1929–2005)

My father, Andres Kossowski — born Andrzej Kossowski in Poland and later known by the English form Andre — was born on 25 September 1929 near Warsaw, Poland, to Zygmunt Kossowski and Zofia Kossowska (née Wilkowska). He grew up with his two brothers — Lesław (later known as Mariano), born 19 August 1921, and Jerzy (Jurek), born 19 November 1928. The three brothers shared a childhood shaped by the upheaval of war and profound personal loss: their father died shortly after the end of the Second World War, and their mother passed away a few years later.

After completing his studies in France in 1946, where he earned a Baccalaureate certification, Andres and his brothers sought a new life beyond the devastation of post-war Europe. While one brother eventually settled in the United States, Andres and Lesław were drawn to Venezuela — a country whose vast, uncharted landscapes and sense of possibility called to their spirit of exploration.

Building New Foundations in Venezuela

Arriving in South America in the late 1940s, Andres and Lesław became involved in one of the most pioneering media initiatives of the time: the founding of Promar TV, Venezuela’s first private television station. As an original co-founder, Andres helped support the station’s formative years, contributing to the establishment of one of Latin America’s earliest regional broadcasters — a milestone that would become part of Venezuela’s cultural and technological history.

Yet Andres’s curiosity reached far beyond broadcasting. Driven by a fascination with landscapes and exploration, he turned his focus toward engineering and cartography, specialising in photogrammetry — the science of aerial mapping. He obtained a Diploma in Topography with the commendation “Sobresaliente en Topografía” in Caracas in February 1952, and continued his training at the International Training Centre for Aerial Survey in the Netherlands, where he completed a Photogrammetric Engineering course between September 1960 and November 1961, registering as an ITC Photogrammetric Technician.

Through this work, Andres contributed to mapping previously undocumented regions of Venezuela, supporting urban planning and land development during a period of rapid growth. His career combined a spirit of discovery with practical innovation, and it was this same spirit that shaped much of his life — and mine.

Art, Exploration and a Life of Curiosity

Although engineering became his profession, Andres’s love of art began much earlier. In the 1940s, while living in Montmartre, Paris, he had dreamed of pursuing formal art studies. Limited means and the pull of new opportunities steered him elsewhere, but he continued to draw, paint and photograph throughout his life. Among his earliest sketches is a portrait of Pepsi, his small schnauzer, drawn in 1950 — the first in a lifelong series of works capturing animals, landscapes and people.

In the early 1960s, Andres met Danuta (née Niewiarowicz) during a trip to Europe. They married in Switzerland, and soon after moved to South Africa, where they built a new chapter of their lives together. Settling first in Pretoria, where I was born in 1966, and then in Cape Town in 1967, my father worked as a qualified engineering technician for the City of Cape Town. Over the following decades, he built up the Photogrammetric Mapping Section there, applying his expertise in aerial mapping to support the city’s development and planning. He retired from the City Council in July 1993, leaving behind a lasting technical legacy.

His adventurous spirit never faded. He would sometimes disappear for weeks on solitary journeys — like the time in the 1970s when he set off by car to Namibia (then South West Africa) and spent time in Etosha, returning with stories that captured my imagination as a child. It was through these stories, and through his constant curiosity about the world, that my father inspired my own way of seeing — a way that has become central to my work as a photographer.

In his later years, Andres devoted more time to art and photography, continuing to observe and record the world around him with the same quiet fascination he had always shown. He passed away on his birthday, 25 September 2005, leaving behind a legacy of curiosity, exploration and creativity — one that lives on in the way I seek to capture and share the world through my lens.