Giya Makondo-Wills is a British-South African documentary photographer, visual artist, educator, and talk show host based in the Netherlands. Her work focuses on identity, the legacy of colonialism, the Western gaze, and systems of power, aiming to challenge visual culture and the history of the camera. De-colonial thinking and collaboration in image-making are central to her practice, as arepreserving the stories of marginalized communities.

In 2021, she became a lecturer in the BA Photography programme at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

In 2022, Makondo-Wills was selected by Fotodok for the FUTURES in Photography program. She was nominated for the 2019 World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and named one of the '31 Women to Watch Out For' by the British Journal of Photography in 2018.

Makondo-Wills has collaborated on projects with the Bristol Museum and the National Museum of Wales, participating in de-colonial exchanges with practitioners from various fields. Since 2017, she hasserved on juries and steering groups developing arts education and opportunities for marginalized artists.

Her work has been exhibited in cities including London, Lagos, Johannesburg, Düsseldorf, Milan, and Paris. She has won an IFOR Documentary Photography Award and been featured in 'Graduate of the Year' profiles.

Makondo-Wills’ work has been published in the British Journal of Photography, Royal Photographic Society Journal, ItsNiceThat, Unseen Magazine, and Source Photographic Review. Her first photo book, They Came From The Water While The World Watched, was published in 2020 by The Lost Light Recordings.

She also run guest workshops internationally and co-host the live talk show 'Fotodok Book Talks' at Tivoli Vredenburg.