.أهلاً وسهلاً

fyeahafrica:

From Congo with Love

Photography exhibition by Rankin

Famous for his portraits of Kylie Minogue, Kate Moss and the Queen, portrait photographer Rankin presents images from his visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo with Oxfam. 

The images focus on the love and solidarity found in the midst of one of the world’s worst conflict zones. There are images and stories exploring romantic love, love lost, mother’s love and the kindness of strangers, as well as photos taken by Congolese villagers with Rankin’s guidance, providing an extraordinary insight into their everyday life.

kilele:

Spring-Summer Collection 2018 (5 & 6), Marrakech, Morocco

Photo by © Hassan Hajjaj © musée du quai Branly, Photoquai 2011

“Born in 1961 in Larache, in northern Morocco, Hassan Hajjaj now divides his time between London and Marrakech. His creative work bears witness to a fascination with urban cultures, consumer products, popular imagery and American Pop Art. 

In these images from Marrakech he plays on the sophisticated codes of fashion circles and music videos. He also succeeded in turning young, heavily veiled and jellaba-clad women into magazine icons and hip-hop stars. The photographs, looking at first glance like Orientalist fantasies, use humour and derision to exploit the ambiguities and contradictions implied by the veil and traditional dress. The accessories, sometimes embellished with haute couture and sportswear logos, transcend any pleading for Orientalism or the female condition and reveal, by standing things on their head, the commonplaces of the Western model and its consumer society.

Kitschy and highly coloured, subversive and outlandish, Hassan Hajjaj’s images put crucial questions about the way East and West see each other, and about cultural exchange between them. They demonstrate that these two worlds are reciprocal creations, each existing, maybe, within the other.”