OUR STORY

ABOUT UNFOLD

Where this begins.

BOTSWANA

A wild childhood

the bush was my playground.

I grew up in Botswana, surrounded by wild Africa. My mom was forever throwing me in the car for another adventure, out along sandy roads with the bush stretching ahead of us and no real plan beyond seeing what we would find.

The bush was my playground. It was where I learnt to be still, to watch, and to wonder. It was never scenery to me. It was home, and it was where I was happiest.

When I was a young girl, our American neighbours gave me their old camera as they were leaving. It was broken. It never took a single photograph. But looking through that frame changed how I saw the world, and I never really put it down again.

THE LONG WAY ROUND

Out into the world

and home again.

I've always had a natural thirst for adventure, and the explorer in me took me far from home. I spent years travelling all over the world, photographing the people and places I met along the way, and somewhere in those years I realised photography wasn't a hobby. It was what I was meant to do.

But the further I went, the more I missed home. The smell of the dust. The wind in my hair on the back of an open vehicle. Those vast, wide-open spaces where you can finally breathe. It wasn't only photography that brought me back. Africa called me home, and all I wanted was to explore more of it.

That was sixteen years ago, and I've been a professional photographer ever since, following the light back into the wild places I love.

STORYTELLER

Stories worth protecting

because we protect what we love.

Over the years, photography became more than making beautiful images. It became a way of telling stories: of the rangers who walk the same boundary every night, the researchers who give their lives to one herd or one species, and the communities who have lived alongside the wild for generations.

Conservation has always been close to my heart. I've seen how fragile these places are, and how much quiet, essential work goes into keeping them wild. A story can do what facts alone cannot. It makes people care. And the people who care are the ones who give, who travel with respect, and who stand up for what is left.

That is why I tell these stories, and why everything I do now gives something back.

Fourteen years of storytelling

THE WORK

told in front of the work.

For fourteen years I've been sharing my fine art, alongside creating visual stories for safari lodges and the travel industry. For seven of those years my work hung in my own gallery at Imhoff Farm in Kommetjie. After that, everything moved online, out to collectors around the world.

And through all of it, in the gallery and at exhibitions, the same thing happened again and again. People's eyes would light up in front of my work.

Those who had been to Africa stood there remembering, and we would share each other's stories. Those who hadn't would say, quietly, "I would love to experience this." And so many of them asked me the same thing.

"Will you take me with you?"

WHAT CHANGED

LIFE IS SHORT

Not long ago, I was chasing a dream: my first big international exhibition, in Amsterdam. It was beautiful. But I remember standing in those crowded streets, and all I could feel was noise. The crowds, the movement, all of it pressing in. I remember thinking: how do people live like this?

Then I lost my dad. Grief and love, in the same breath. It made me question everything, and what I came back with was simple. It isn't the things. It's the experiences, the memories, and the people you share them with. And life is too short not to follow what you know you're meant to do.

So many people have never stood somewhere truly still. Somewhere ancient and vast, where the only sounds are the wild ones, and you look at the world like a curious child again. I wanted to change that. Success, for me, isn't chasing anymore. It's helping people feel the wild so deeply that they want to protect it.

so follow what calls you.

A SEED, PLANTED

HOW UNFOLD BEGAN

and slowly unfolding.

That's where Unfold began. It needed to be its own brand, because it was never just about me. It's built on collaboration, with guides, filmmakers and photographers who have spent their lives in Africa and in conservation, and who love it as much as I do.

And conservation runs through all of it: in the camps we choose, the stories we tell, and a part of what we earn going straight back to the wild.

Unfold is a seed I've planted, knowing it will slowly unfold in its own way, through the people I meet and the places I go.

Françoise

FOUNDER • UNFOLD AFRICA

Our Ethos

How you travel matters.

Every Unfold journey is built on respect for the land, the wildlife, and the people who call it home - chosen to leave as little behind as possible, and to put something back into the places that made the trip worth taking.

Supporting conservation

Which lodge you stay at is not a side decision for us. The camps we choose have conservation built into how they operate, not bolted onto it. Your stay helps fund anti-poaching patrols, ecological research, habitat protection, and the communities living alongside the wildlife.

Empowering communities

The people who live in these landscapes are their most important custodians. We travel with locally owned camps, locally trained guides and community projects built to last, so a stay with Unfold funds education, employment and cultural preservation long after the trip ends.

Treading lightly

Solar-powered camps, plastic-free practices, low-impact routes, and locally sourced supplies wherever we can manage it. The goal isn't just a lighter footprint. It's leaving the wild as wild and as whole as it was before you arrived.