Former judge in the Constitutional Court of South Africa Albie Sachs retired in 2009. Here he was speaking at the World Summit on Arts and Culture in Newcastle/Gateshead, UK in 2006. During the era of apartheid, Albie Sachs went into exile from South Africa to England and then to Mozambique. It was in Mozambique in 1988, that he lost his right arm and the sight of one eye when a bomb, which was placed by South African security agents, detonated in his car. After this, he devoted himself to the preparations for a new democratic constitution for South Africa. In his speech to the conference he used his one good eye and one good arm to maximum effect and even joked about the missing arm and lost eye! This photograph is a favourite for me because in all its simplicity it says something about the man and his message in a very symbolic way and records a moment of great inspiration from another human being acting in this world with courage, conviction, humour and great humanity.

"When it came to building what I believe
to be the most beautiful, most interesting,
most playful, most serious, most bemusing,
most wonderful court in the whole world, we
started with nothing – no resources, no money,
no place, nothing. Have you thought about
nothing, how interesting nothing is because
nothing is always between something and
something else? Nothing in time is always
before a moment to come and after a moment
that’s been. We started with nothing and
nothing meant we could invent ourselves."

Justice Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court of
South Africa