Young Black Photographers Making Waves
Happy Black History Month!
During this important time of celebration and reflection, we wanted to focus on exciting things that are being created by young black photographers so here's a list of 8 ambitious photographers we really appreciate right now. The current work which as you’ll see is magical, storytelling, and thought-provoking. Not only that, but each of these photographers capture in a style that is recognisable as their own. We’re excited to see where they're heading and the remarkable aids we see them making to the world of photography. While they’re all at different phases of this journey one thing is for sure; we’ll be keeping a close eye on them along the way!
Nadine Ijewere is a Fashion & Portrait Photographer based in London. She graduated from London College of Fashion with a BA in Fashion Photography. Her imaginative and earthy portraits stem from cultural diversity and her own personal journey as a Revert. The work highlights a curiosity to challenge the conventional definition of what 'beauty' is. The portraits have this intimacy about them, inviting connections through the many emotional layers.
Tyrone is a film photographer based in Northampton, England, with an eye for the every day in the most uncanny way. Tyrone has only been doing photography for just over 3 years, in such a short space of time he has become a master of flash, colour and the missed moment with a fresh style that would stop traffic. He is a super fly 35mm point and shooter capturing his home town, personal connections, and textures in a fresh way. He captures in such a way that makes the viewer intrigued by the image, the lines, the colours and textures.
Amaal is a Danish-born Somali photographer and poet, based in London, UK. Her work is exploring storytelling and how best she can connect with people to document their stories. The works focus on mainly Women of Colour, bringing to life these stories hidden inside them but also in an attempt to widen representation. The light that Amaal captures these figures in magical surroundings creating language between the figures, the landscape and light.
When you place together a combination of parkour, urban exploring and a love of photography and you get, Lamarr Golding, a Clapham-based photographer taking incredible shots of London from angles that you can only imagine. After graduating from a Creative Media diploma at Kingston University and Lamaar is forging a career in photography and filmmaking. He’s done work for Time Out, Blood Brother, Culture Trip London and Arsenic Magazine. It is so refreshing to see the London landscape captured from new heights.
Andile Buka has shot Johannesburg from above, giving us a birds-eye-view of the CBD in the city he calls home. Then, zooming in to capture Joburg and its residents at face level, he shoots personal and collaborative portrait projects with considered style and substance. The images are either in black and white or in vibrant colour, all of his images are captured on film or we’ve been captivated since we first laid eyes on his work. They bring the viewer to this place of the artist, the home in which he documents, but also have this nostalgic feeling in the way they have been captured.
Jolade is an Islington born photographer, filmmaker and poet raised in Hackney and Nigeria. The series was inspired by his childhood and desire to capture his community as he knew it. From the very basic human perspective and not from white-washed view of the west. Jolade captures moments in their most candid and uninterrupted. He captures these moments of conversation, and home in such a soft way, inviting the viewer to feel at home.
Sipho Mpongo is a photographer born in the rural Eastern Cape village of Nqamakwe ,raised in Langa, Cape Town. A local photographic mentorship programme, Illiso Labantu, provided a platform for him to launch into a photographic career which received a notable boost last year as he embarked on the Twenty Journey alongside Wikus de Wet and Sean Meterlerkamp. The trio set off to document South Africa and its inhabitants as we celebrated twenty years of democracy, with Sipho focusing his attention on the ‘born frees’. These youthful beings are captured in these candid moments of freedom, and young age, finding themselves.
Heather Agyepong is a visual artist who lives and works in London. This series of work was inspired by a 19th century Carte-de-visite of Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Sarah was the West African adopted goddaughter of Queen Victoria who came to live in England at a young age. The images are based on my Heather’s own personal experiences as a young black woman, dealing with the macro and micro traumas of racism encountered while travelling around European countries. Too Many Blackamoors aims to challenge the ‘strong, independent, black female' narrative that can burden and often entrap black women. With Sarah as her template, the project efforts to illustrate the effects of such perceptual limitations whilst exploring her own internal conflicts of falling short from such mainstream ideals.
