Chris Saunders

Chris Saunders was born in 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa. With a background in fashion photography, he has developed a body of work centered on street-fashion and music. He captures realistic characters in various situations to create a visual storytelling. His projects are largely concerned with the cultural expression of contemporary people living in South Africa. Saunders also reflects on social identity through the study of local subcultures as seen in the Smarteez (2011) and the Pantsula (2016) series. The smarteez are a young generation of South Africans born after the struggles against apartheid, who fight for self-expression and challenge stereotypes. They take control of their identity, repositioning themselves as bold, original and creative in their approach to fashion and style. Pantsula is the name of a dance culture originating in the black townships during apartheid. Dancers within this community perform choreographies in small groups, outdoors or during organized competitions. The series presents both the intricacies of the movements and the place of that dance within a culture, a fashion, and the township environment.

Namsa Leuba

Namsa Leuba was born in 1982 in in Switzerland to a Guinean mother and a Swiss father. She studied visual communication and photography at the University of Art and Design in Lausanne, and completed her postgraduate studies in photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Leuba focuses on the representation of African identity through the Western imagination. She works on projects that combine an anthropological interest in traditional customs with an aesthetic informed by fashion and design sensibilities. In the series African Queens (2012), she aims to fuse high fashion with history, reconstructing how African women are portrayed. She captured her models wearing clothes that she modified in a variety of ways using rope, wooden planks and African-inspired artifacts. Leuba creates a visual imaginary that explores the signs and symbols of her cultural heritage, from rituals and ceremonies to statuettes and masquerades. In her first significant series Ya Kala Ben (2011), she travelled to Guinea Conakry to understand the local animist beliefs. Working closely with the community, she took the iconography of fetishes and statuettes and set them in a new context through her meticulous choice of poses and people.

Daniel Obasi

Daniel Obasi was born in 1995 in Abia, a state in the southeastern region of Nigeria. Currently based in Lagos, Nigeria, Obasi spends half his time in the classroom studying French at the University of Lagos and the other half balancing his creative endeavors that range from styling editorials and lookbooks for publications like Oxosi, Hunger Magazine, Nataal and Contributor Magazine. His projects often talk about controversial topics in Nigeria including gender, sexuality and social issues. In his film Illegal (2017), Obasi journeys through Nigerian tradition and the promise of a more open future by exploring gender fluidity and non-conformity, topics that are still taboo in contemporary Nigeria. The film is deeply influenced by the young artist's raw, colorful, and Afrofuturist photography practice. Beyond using his art as a way to start conversations, Obasi also prefers presenting the work of African designers as seen in the Nativity (2015) series. Most of his editorials feature exclusively African designers and allow people from other continents to engage with the trends happening in West Africa.