About:
“Mehdi Sefrioui (b. Tangier, Morocco) is a fashion and art photographer based in Paris. He got his start in 2010, encouraging his passion for the arts through street photography.
Image making is a way to express life.
Where in street photography Mehdi aims to capture the ephemeral moments of life witnessed, through fashion he sees it as an apt vehicle for the imagination, a medium to express the human quest for true emotion beyond pure aesthetics and beauty.”
Under Sefrioui’s guidance an irenic squad of black male models converge on the outskirts of Paris. Registering somewhere on the spectrum between Ilan Godfrey’s situational ‘The Harvest’ and Richard Moss’ Aerochrome photography of eastern Congo, Sefrioui’s infrared treatment plays up the issue of runway diversity through rose colored glasses. Brooding eyes against pink woods a heady dream of black skin in fashion, of blacks on the runway. Which, along with his use of composition lure the observer into a longer gaze. A much needed poetic reprieve from the bitch that is reality.
Burdened by historical and detached forces, being black isn’t a fashion statement but a lived experience that, in 2014 can still lead to death by racism. Sigh… I wish we had a hundred more Naomi’s. A hundred more ways for people like Michael Dunn to put down the gun when hearing hip hop.
Fashion will truly break rules when the authority it wields over our definitions of beauty find expression in more elegant proportions of what it means to be black, alongside white [ness].
Copyright: Mehdi Sefrioui.