Lavonne first picked up a camera and fell in love with photography in 1999. She had her first big solo exhibition in 2008 at the Cape Town Artscape with her project “Ilungile, It Is Good”, portraits of the amaXhosa people living in the Cape Town townships.

In 2011, Lavonne exchanged Western living for two and a half years staying in a small caravan in the Transkei. Here she deepened her bond with the amaXhosa people and worked on her photo project “Makhelwane, my neighbor”.

At the end of 2013, Lavonne moved back to the Western Cape, Stellenbosch and received an ‘artist in residency’ position with the Sustainable Mountain Art Programme (SMART), Switzerland in 2016 where she created the body of work entitled “First Light” which focuses on migration in the Swiss Alps.

She had a solo exhibition with this project in the city of Chur, Switzerland. A follow-up exhibition was held (which included the Makhelwane collection) at GUS, University Gallery in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2018.

Lavonne is currently living in Vietnam, working on a new personal project, “Photo Art Stories of Vietnam”, capturing ‘street stories’ of a rapidly developing city, Hanoi.