Kyle Weeks: Ovahimba Youth Self Portraits
About:
Born 1992, Namibia
Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa
www.kyleweeksphoto.com
My work is influenced by my own experiences in relation to those around me. My family’s enjoyment and appreciation of the natural world, mentors who have helped broaden my knowledge on the medium and friends whose interests shape my own. Then of course there’s music, books and the World Wide Web with its endless stream of inspiring photography.
I admire the work of so many. Rineke Dijkstra, Katy Grannan, Alec Soth, Viviane Sassen, Richard Renaldi, Jamie Hawkesworth and Mark Peckezian, to name a few. The list grows constantly.(quotes from interview in Fotoroom)
Kyle sought to challenge the usual power dynamic between sitter and photographer with this set of portraits, allowing each of the men to control the shutter release. For the photographer this reduced his influence over the resulting images and allowed the me to portray their own identities for the camera. “In doing so we get to see these young men, as they want to be seen: traditional, contemporary and proud of whom they are,” says Kyle. “It calls for an end to preconceived visual assumptions, as the hybridisation of their culture no longer facilitates such a clear-cut distinction between traditional and contemporary cultural identity.”(quote from article by Owen Pritchard in It’s Nice That website)