8 minute read
STANDING OUT IN CAMOUFLAGE
Thandiwe Muriu’s Camo collection is a blaze of colour and camera trickery that celebrates African beauty and innovation. Here the Kenyan photographer reveals how the six-year project has helped her shape her personal vision as well as her love of her country.
When Thandiwe Muriu was a teenager she would stage her own photo shoots at the family home in Nairobi using a Nikon D80 digital camera borrowed from her dad and her fashion-obsessed older sister as a very willing model. Not having much money, Thandiwe had to improvise, using kitchen foil as a reflector to provide flattering ‘fill light’ for the portraits.
That intrinsically Kenyan resourcefulness is still evident in the latest work by Thandiwe – now an awardwinning photographer who shoots for some of the biggest brands, agencies and publications in Africa. In Camo – a collection of photographs Thandiwe has been adding to since 2015 – her dark-skinned models are accessorised with everyday items such as soft drink cans, plastic tea strainers, bottle tops, combs, straws and mirrors. It’s an innovative use of everyday items that Thandiwe sees on the streets of Nairobi every day and wanted to celebrate.
Kenyan innovation
“Here in Kenya it’s normal to use one thing for 10 different purposes,” she says. “You have to make things work. I love the fact that people here will buy plastic hand mirrors and use them to decorate their clothes or stick them on their bikes to act as wing mirrors.”
Thandiwe pairs these quirky touches with a background of funky fabrics and gives the models traditional hairstyles with a modern twist to present a vivacious picture of African beauty.
“Camo is my love letter to Africa. I wanted to celebrate the things around me. We have a strong culture here and exploring it for the Camo images has made me fall in love with it even more. I am exploring our history, but giving it a modern face lift.”
'Colour is in my DNA'
Key to the impact of the images is Thandiwe’s bold use of colour. Speaking to me via video call from her home office, she says: “Colour is in my DNA.” The statement seems momentarily incongruous given the neutral colour palette on the walls and Thandiwe’s stylish, yet muted attire, but the colour comes through in her vision of Africa. “I want to show people the magic I see,” she says.
So she trawls the most “dark and cramped” corners of markets in Nairobi to find the fabric with the sense of vibrant energy she’s after, gets her hairstylist to create amazing asymmetric cuts or hoops of braided hair and tops the look off with goggles with each made from a crushed Coca Cola can or glasses with frames made from connected drinking straws.
The images are playful, but as with the fabric motifs in the background that Thandiwe manipulates and repeats using photo editing software until they fool the eye into seeing three dimensions, Camo has hidden depths.
“I like to describe Camo as light, but heavy,” Thandiwe says. Camo is short for camouflage and, depending on how you look at the images, the models are either breaking out of the background or being swallowed up by it. The dichotomy is deliberate.
“Africa is not perfect. It’s very patriarchal,” Thandiwe says. “It’s a commentary on how many times we can lose ourselves in our culture and yet there are such unique things about every individual. It’s a little ironic – I want my models to blend into the background even as they stand out.”
Thandiwe knows what it is like to feel invisible as a young woman trying to make a name for herself in the male-dominated world of photography. “I can remember walking onto a set and if my assistant was male, he would be approached as if he was the photographer and not me,” she says.
Camouflage on camera - Thandiwe Muriu with her work
Images courtesy of Thandiwe-Muriu
Hidden depths - The Camo images contain layers of meaning
Images courtesy of Thandiwe-Muriu
When the photography assignments first started coming in, Thandiwe was still in her teens. The portraits she took of her sister and posted on Facebook just for fun started attracting the interest of clients asking how much she charged for her photography work. Soon brands started reaching out and an agent came calling.
Thandiwe had felt an immediate affinity for photography from the moment her father let her use his camera at age 14. Her parents raised four children, all daughters, and her father – a bishop who studied science at university and who she describes as a “liberal thinker” – was keen they were all brought up as strong, independent women.
While this meant learning practical skills such as changing a car tyre, fixing devices around the house and understanding computers, Thandiwe’s parents also encouraged more creative pursuits. “Dad has a deep appreciation of music and my mum has an art degree so she has a deep feeling for the arts,” she says.
Images courtesy of Thandiwe-Muriu
Photography connection
Her older sister proved a talented artist and another sister began showing the musical skills that would lead her to become a classical pianist, yet Thandiwe struggled to find her artistic outlet. “I have no idea how to draw,” she says.
However, when her keen amateur photographer father encouraged all four daughters to try out his digital camera, it was Thandiwe that took toit straight away.
“It was instant chemistry,” she says.“I like to say my father put a camerain my hand and I’ve never let go of itsince.”
She honed her skills by watchingcountless tuition videos on YouTubeand by the time Thandiwe had starteda degree in marketing at the UnitedStates International University inNairobi, she was running a successful side hustle as a commercial photographer with regular work at events.
Images courtesy of Thandiwe-Muriu
An excellent student, Thandiwe was inundated with “incredible” job offers outside of photography once she graduated. There were plenty of people telling her that the creative sector was a desperate career option in Kenya. “Here a career in the arts is a Plan B. If you are an artist, people think your Plan A must have failed,” she says.
However, that didn’t include Thandiwe’s father. “He told me ‘You know you love photography. This is your calling, you should go and do it,’” she says.
Thandiwe’s decision to pursue photography full-time was also swayed by what she calls “an awakening” in Kenya at that time. She counts herself lucky that as she approached her graduation there was a growing community of creatives in the country following their passion and making a living out of it. Their number included photographers Osborne Macharia and Mutua Matheka, who saw the promise in Thandiwe and supported her.
Innovation - Model wearing glasses made from multi-coloured drinking straws
Images courtesy of Thandiwe-Muriu
Personal vision
Osborne – a self-taught Kenyan commercial photographer and digital artist whose work focuses on themes of Afrofuturism in culture and identity – was also key in encouraging more personal themes to come through in Thandiwe’s work.
While she was enjoying commercial photography and the creative challenge of “shooting someone else’s vision”, there was a nagging feeling that Thandiwe was not being true to her own experiences. These doubts were compounded by a growing unease with the images in the fashion magazines that so enchanted her as a young teen.
She and her older sister would pore over the pages of Vogue magazine and the photographer in Thandiwe would wonder “how did they make them look like that?” However, in adulthood Thandiwe began to realise that the pictures rarely featured girls that looked like her and it played into insecurities about her appearance. “I have had struggles with my looks over the years. I went through periods of hating my hair, hating my features. Part of that was not seeing someone like myself in those pictures.”
African identity
Camo was created as a celebration of African, even tribal beauty. Thandiwe deliberately chose dark-skinned models, including one with a prominent gap between her two front teeth – considered a staple of attractiveness by Kikuyus in Kenya. “I want a young African girl to be able to look and my work and say ‘That’s me,’” she says.
With Camo being such a personal work, the widespread acclaim it has met me has been especially satisfying. Photographs from the collection have been displayed at the Alliance Française centre in Nairobi and this year’s solo exhibition at the 193 Gallery in Paris has gained global media coverage.
“Camo has been so well received,” she says. “It’s now become what I’m most known for.”
Thandiwe is now a leading light in Kenya’s creative sector and, just as online tutorials formed the building blocks of her photographic journey, she now has her own YouTube channel to share her skills with a new generation coming through. There are “great creatives out there to be discovered in Kenya,” she says.
Camo is far from finished. Thandiwe is still inspired to find new ways to embody how much she loves hercountry and will keep adding to thecollection. She also still loves Voguemagazine, but if the offer of a covershoot arrived, “I would do it my way,”she says.
Colourful - Thandiwe scours Nairobi for powerful fabrics to use as background to her Camo images
Images courtesy of Thandiwe-Muriu
Thandiwe Muriu’s most popular video tutorials
The photographer offers a range of tips on technique, equipment and photo editing. Here are the five most watched. Visit youtube.com
1. Memory cards CF vs SD
2. Good first time gear for a photographer
3. Shooting in bright light
4. How to focus your camera
5. Shooting in tight spaces
