He became interested in photography while rifling through his uncle's copies of National Geographic magazine and the black-and-white moving images of the cinema.
He attended South Peninsula High School in Diep River where his English teacher, Richard Rive introduced him to the work of local and international artists and writers.
He encouraged his students not only to read from the syllabus but introduced them to writers such as James Matthews, Alex La Guma, Jan Rabie, Uys Krige, Breyten Breytenbach and others from the Sestigers movement.
[3] Through his travels he continued to connect with exiled South Africans, many of whom were also poets, musicians, artists and writers, he soon became a part of this closely knit family.
He made contact with the likes of Pallo Jordan, Alex La Guma, and Dudu Pukwana in London, and African writers such as Wole Soyinka and Ahmadou Kourouma in Berlin.
[4] He took this opportunity with both hands, spending the rest of the decade in the United States where he was invited to participate in exhibitions and projects with five other universities.
The weight of this image is in the exchange between the two subjects, with Turner's dry smile and De Kock's straight gaze ahead.
This project led to his work with the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo and the resulting travelling exhibition, Strengths and Convictions: The life and times of the South African Nobel Peace laureates Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.
It sets his work apart from his peers and its development can be traced back to his early images of District Six and continued into his understated portraits of South African exiles.
He was strongly committed to passing on his skills to aspiring photographers, and has taught photography at American, British, European, and South African institutions.