What is the future? Creatives, as a whole, tend to be dreamers who have visions of the future that others couldn’t even begin to conceive of. One such conception comes courtesy of Kristin-Lee Moolman, a fashion photographer from South Africa, and Ib Kamara, a stylist and costume maker originally from Sierra Leone, a duo casting revolutionary waves through the fashion world thanks to “2026,” their series of bold, utopian images of African men in a place, and time, where race and gender fall by the wayside in favor of personality and expression.
Styled by Kamara and shot by Moolman, the project breaks down the status quo when it comes to sexuality and fashion—Who said heterosexuality had to be the norm? Who laid down the rules of what men and women were meant to wear?—and instead replaces it with a ‘new normal’ that seems quotidian in the parallel universe the subjects gaze at us from. In “2026,” each of the models, all friends of Moolman’s, wear what they want when they want: shredded denim, bubblegum-colored cowboy hats, or leopard-print bodycon, on the street, on a front lawn, or in the carpark. The juxtaposition between their world and ours sends a frisson down the spine.
The duo connected in 2015, when they started following each other on Instagram. The first time they met in real life was when Moolman picked Kamara up from the airport in Johannesburg for his month-long residency to work on “2026.” Looking at their work, it’s hard to believe they’ve known each other for less than two years; there’s an energy that pulses through it that feels like they’ve known each other since childhood. For Moolman, this synergy comes as no surprise. “I feel like we have a very similar point of view on various things, as well as being open and receptive to new stimuli and ideas from each other and our surroundings,” she says.
Source: The Last Magazine
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