collection spring summer 2010 

It was my fourth time to work with Gozi, creating visuals for her brand – U.Mi-1. This time we were highly inspired by tradition of African studio photography. Blend of hidden tensions between hopes, ambitions, beauty and not-always-ideal reality. 

Please watch the images, 
read the story, 
and 
everything beyond it.

 
click here to watch the story

Photography: Maciej Kucia

Styling: Junya Hayashida
Hair: Mina (The Salon)
Make-up: Yoshiko Kawashima

Set Design: Przemek Sobocki

Script written by Gozi Ochonogor

Models: Guil (Exiles), Kent (Evviva)
Natio (Satoru), Milo, Tiola

collection designed by Gozi Ochonogor for U.Mi-1

in collaboration withplusminuszero

Inspiration, Background

Gisela Feurle on African photo-studios

“Picture is a Silent Talker” – Gisela Feurle
From the beginning of the twentieth century, Africans took up the profession of photographer in various regions and colonial contexts. (…) In 1940s man photo studios were established in West and East African cities, at central places like markets and main streets.
The photo studios are both a public and a private space: They produce pictures that depict social norms, roles, and values and at the same time express secret personal wishes and visions, and may also break or play with norms. The studios are places of transformation. Often they are arranged like stages (…) and they provide clothing and accessories, such as watches, hats, and bicycles. The poses, accessories, and backdrops function as signs and codes in the social and cultural context and the photographers act as life-style specialists. their studios thus become places of dream production and spaces to participate in the images of modernity. (…)
A studio portrait is a representation of reality and a cultural construct like every photograph, but I think it’s peculiarity is – and this is a questions of degree – that it is an explicit and obvious construction and one in which the subject has a say. Its specific character is determined by specific circumstances and by the relation between the photographer and the photographed, the business person and the customer. (…) The subject is active and takes decisions: these is the act of going to a studio, the purpose of the photo, the liberty to choose pose, the background and the accessories more or less guided by the advice, the experience, and the art of the photographer – all in the context of the respective social and cultural norms. There aspects apply to studio photography in general – in Europe in 1900 or in Africa in 1950; however (…) the African studio photography relates to particular traditions – sculpture and textile art – and its modes of expression do not aim at realistic image: ideals and ideas, dreams and aspirations are staged. (…)
African studio portraits directly invite us to reflect on and understand realities beyond the image, the invisiblele reality. We are referred to the reality of the subject’s dreams and wishes and of the self-image expressed in the photo, we wonder about the reality of the subject’s life before and after the taking of the photo. (…)

photographs by Seydou Keita

photographs by Malick Sidibe