Rachel Seidu has spent years sensitively photographing males in Nigeria. Set towards the plush, tropical backdrop of her birthplace, Seidu’s delicate portraiture exudes a uncommon tenderness – her topics’ souls laid naked to breach the restrictions of the perceived male id. Having caught the eye of Saint Laurent artistic director Anthony Vaccarello, the photographer has now been invited to take her work to the worldwide stage for the seventh quantity of the French label’s Saint Laurent Rive Droite Fanzine platform, which reveals in shops in Paris and Los Angeles.
Nodding to the Saint Laurent Rive Gauche line, which helped to democratise vogue and luxurious within the 60s by bringing experimental necessities to the lots, the Rive Droit shops, that are open to the general public, undertake an analogous egalitarian strategy that showcases artwork, music, pictures and performances from across the globe. Curated by Anthony Vaccarello, the shops and its occupying expressions act as an growth of the elegant universe of Saint Laurent.
Seven pictures from a choice of Seidu’s picture collection like Self-Sabotage, Boy on the Ikpoba River and Rainbows and Needs are being displayed, every imbued with a symbolism that inform a narrative behind every picture. Two, inky silhouetted palms maintain vibrant orange flowers to the sky; in one other shot, they’re tucked behind the ear. A determine clutches his neck in entrance of an unlimited and dry desert expanse as a rainbow arcs overhead, elsewhere two boys bathe in languor in glistening a river – Seidu captures intimate recollections of intimacy amongst males, confronting gender boundaries and expressing the great thing about male expressions of emotion in an effort to upend the stereotypes of African tradition, gender, race and sexuality.
