Kristen-Lee Moolman is an accredited international photographer. She’s won the Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers as of 2020 and has worked for some of the biggest fashion houses in the industry, including Dior and Burberry. Not to mention she’s also worked with the queen Rihanna on her Fenty campaign.
However, despite all the lux of the high life she has captured through her lens, for Moolman, the purpose now goes back to her South African roots. Her latest muse is challenging the stereotypes about our country.
Moolman has stated, as per The South African, that working on some projects in the international fashion industry caused her to reach an important conclusion: she could no longer create work she didn’t identify with.
This is why her latest campaigns and shoots have been so focused on important topics close to her heart.
Moolman’s story.
Kristen-Lee Moolman grew up during the final years of apartheid (as per The South African). The political turmoil in South Africa, with which she grew up had a profound effect on Moolman, and her sense of identity as per CNN.
“I felt so much guilt by association of what my people did to other people,” she said. “For a long time, I wanted to get away from being Afrikaans, being White, being South African.”
She began travelling abroad in the mid-2000s, and worked on really any project that was leaps and bounds from home. She worked mostly on fashion shoots and ad campaigns during this time, but admits that “there was no soul there.” She was yet to put the soul back in the shoots.
Her life was “nomadic” for a long time and far from home. Moolman was based in Thailand for some time but was frequently flying all over the world due to the nature of her work. However, the more projects she worked on, the more she realised the type of story she wanted to tell. And those were the stories that showcased the strength of characters, of women, of queer people and to challenge the narrative of South Africa’s portrayal.
She returned to South Africa amidst lockdown in 2020.
The stories she is telling.
Her work is focused on a counter-narrative curation, from women, to queer people, to South Africa’s portrayal.
Women empowerment.
A huge step for her wanting to portray these kinds of messages stemmed from Rihanna’s Fenty campaign.
“Rihanna was one of the first ones (shoots) where I realized, you know what? Women are powerful,” Moolman told CNN.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Rihanna, because of her voice in terms of diversity, women, sexuality.”
One of Moolman’s latest projects is “Banyoloyi A Bosigo” or “Ultimate Midnite Angels”. It’s a short film that showcases the Autumn/Winter 2021 collection of South African fashion designer Thebe Magugu.
The 12-minute film, shot and written by Moolman, features an all-female cast in a story infused with African spirituality and queer characters.
South Africa’s narrative
She also became inspired to repackage how South Africa and South Africans are portrayed in the media. For Moolman, the portrayal of our country is “predominantly negative.”
“There’s this strength of character that people don’t show,” she said.
For Moolman, our country’s “creativity and joy” are so often overlooked (
The South African).
Going back to her point of the strength of character that is not seen, Moolman has diverse subjects gaze directly into the camera against a dreamy, bleached landscape.
She’s also returned to shooting landscapes of our gorgeous country, in an attempt to show that there is so much more than poverty, violence and socio-political issues.
Picture: Kristen-Lee Moolman
