In 2017 Twenty-seven mothers that lost their sons and daughters to unjust police killing came to my studio to speak of the loss of their children, the pain in their hearts and the injustice the courts systems have dealt these families. It started in Ferguson but has swept the country. Today not a day goes by where a young man or woman of color gets shot because of the color of their skin.
The Animal Kingdom: A Collection of Portraits is my first monograph published by Rizzoli New York and designed by Pentagram. The book itself is a series of over 150 portraits of animals in studio, all photographed in a singular, timeless aesthetic. It is my perspective and portrayal of the animal kingdom. As a portrait photographer, my intention is for these animal portraits to speak to the viewer. What they say depends on the conscious and subconscious feeling one embodies at the time.
This is a series of portraits of genocide victims, as imagined through their recovered clothes. I was shooting in Rwanda in April/May 2018 when new mass graves were discovered, almost 25 years after the genocide. My work attempts to challenge the universal fatigue that has set in around the genocide narrative, in large part by engaging the viewer?s imagination. This series does that. While it is impossible to imagine 1 million murdered victims, we can readily imagine the life of the little girl in THAT white dress who was clubbed to death or dismembered by a machete-wielding perpetrator.
On 16. October 2016 a coalition of Iraqi and Kurdish military forces launch operation ?We are coming, Nineveh? – the fight to retake the Iraqi city Mosul and the surrounding area from ISIS. Nine months later Mosul is declared liberated. An AP report estimates that upwards of 11,000 civilians have been killed during the war, and according to the International Organisation for Migration more than 800,000 people have fled their home.
Sunday Best depicts a person?s finest clothing worn on special occasions. In this case, Sunday and often church. On beginning the project,I fatefully walked into Kibera?s oldest photo studio 4 days before it closed forever. Weekend Studio opened in 1980,in Kenya?s largest slum, Kibera. The photographer, who leased the studio for 37 years, told me that due to phone cameras few wanted studio portraits and clients requested for passport photos. He stressed his need to retire and return home to family. Troubled by it?s end, I ultimately took over the hire. All portraits were Sunday Best walk-ins.
Rupture. A series that I shot in Mid-2018. The most challenging and most dangerous series I have shot to date. The results still blow me away today. Shooting from a low angle with a medium length lens, utilising high shutter speeds to capture the water movement and also surrounding wildlife sharply in the one frame.
With this series, I aim to create quiet and personal pictures of animals which inhabit zoos and sanctuaries. To achieve this, I used the natural light and shadows available in their enclosures to isolate them from their surroundings. Through this process, I found that my portraits became imbued with an emotionality that illuminated the connection I felt with the animals as I photographed them. The essence of their psyche seemed to boil to the top, as if they were sitting for an intimate portrait.
“The Awakening” focuses on familial bonds, motherhood, fatherhood & celebration of childhood. Inspired by the work of Marianne Stokes whose portraits often showed the fine details of garments that were floor length and embroidered. ?My camera remains my primary tool of communication, while my constant exploration of diverse ways of expression moves me to add several different layers using a variety of mediums. After a portrait session is complete, I digitally manipulate my subjects and unite them with other photographic components to achieve a work that is a new photographic expression.
Exploring one of the many temporary ice caves created as the vast expanse of the Vatnaj?kull ice cap recedes. These subglacial meltwater channels create spectacular exits as they leave the glacier. The upper hole seen here is known as a relict portal, created by a previous higher meltwater channel.
I create this series of photographs with a vision to express an unusual scene in a usual scene. All of the photographs are taken in Tokyo. Lots of architectures in Tokyo are very close. But looking at the architectures from a particular viewpoint, they are independent. What I want to tell in this series of photographs is an importance of viewpoint. If we look a thing from a particular viewpoint, we can find a different surface of a thing. And I think if we keep trying to find viewpoints, surfaces will show up one after another. This is the vision and what I want to express in this photography.
In recent centuries humans have become one of the most important factors influencing the biological, geological and atmospheric processes on Earth. The book ?Habitat? documents human impact on natural environments by aerial photography. It raises the question of when man?s influence on Earth began and how our civilization has developed since that. The photos should involve and invite the viewer to discover our planet from a different perspective. It should help to understand the dimensions of man?s intervention in natural spaces and to take responsibility for that.
The Rohingya is a minor Muslim ethnic group who lived in Myanmar for centuries. However, due to the racism and many other socio-political issues among the majority in Myanmar, they were declared as a stateless Bengali community who migrated to Myanmar from Bangladesh. Over one million Rohingyas live in Myanmar and they are the most persecuted people in the world who are deprived from their own land, human rights and citizenship. In recent times, the Myanmar Army started a silent genocide to forcefully evacuate them out of the country.
City Soleil is a shantytown that consists between 200,000 to 400,000 people who live in extreme poverty. Despite the poor environment, the daily lives of the children on this land is an interesting one. This is not their choice but what they are born with. They embrace the given and live on within their environment. Their reality may upset the eyes of an observer but the people of City Soleil acknowledge in existence. This is their story?especially the narratives of the children who prevail in hunger but in sincerity.
Series of compositions with flowers and small creatures. Most of them were brought to home by my cats. These images are a tribute to them. No photoshop manipulations in composition. All compositions are creating by me manually before shooting session.
The series “Shadows on the shoulders of giants” presents the relation between men, simple vagabonds in the ephemeral passage, and the mountain, permanent, timeless. Before their finitude, these men seek to seize a part of the eternity of these places. They are explorers, seeking for something else, looking beyond nature’s limits to discover their own intern ones. It is also a story of light and shadow, of black and white, of extremes, of opposition and echoes, between the silhouettes and their giants.
