Kristin Lee Moolman is capturing new ideas of Africa

Kristin Lee Moolman is a South African photographer and filmmaker who is capturing ‘New Africa.’ Her work presents new ideas of the landscape whilst exploring gender and non-conformist ideas. 

For a some time, it seemed the voices of African artists had been lost. The voice is usually replaced by traditional and conservative ideas of the continent. Kristin-Lee Moolman turns away from stereotypes and uses her experiences to show alternative narratives from Africa. 

She told Dazed in an interview:

“The one thing I will never do is disempower a person in my imagery, I always try to empower people. I will never try to make them look like any stereotype that people may have about us here” – Kristin-Lee Moolman via Dazed 

Her most recent project, Soft Criminal, is an exhibition displaying at Brooklyn New York’s Red Hook Labs. The exhibition is a collaboration between herself, CSM alumni and i-D editor at large Ibrahim Kamara and British designer Gareth Wrighton. In an interview, Moolman describes the exhibition as 

“ A two-dimensional and three-dimensional manifestation of our world that we’ve been recreating. It’s like a complete visual collaboration between three creatives who have these different ideas that live in the same world.”

The photographs in the exhibition references aspects of each artists reality. The personal realities of the creatives are combined with a narrative of characters from the African diaspora. The narrative is about three rival crime families and a chaotic struggle for power. The story includes several characters including a disgraced king and anarchic warlord. The characters in the story are explored through handmade garments made by local African artists and the collection of photographs.