To photograph the Queer community of the Royal House of Lame of Lagos, South African Sabelo Mlangeni has spent long moments in their company. His images that mix Infortune and Glamor are exposed to the Palace of Tokyo in Paris until February.
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Faux journal lamps and scarf stressing the princely head port, James Brown takes place and loving looks. To photograph Influner Drag-Queen Nigerian with 657,000 Instagram subscribers , Sabelo Mlangeni had to wait two good months.
The time needed to reassure it and melt in the Queer community of the Royal House of Allure, Lagos, Nigeria. This precious housing in a country where homosexuality has been criminalized since 2014 unveils in the impressive series of exposed photos, at the Palace of Tokyo, in Paris as part of the exhibition “Ubuntu, a lucid dream”.
Graduate of the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, Sabelo Mlangeni lives close to the minorities chased. In South Africa, far from the metropolises, he has already photographed the transsexuals of the deep bush. In 2019, he began to document the culture of celebrity on social networks in Africa and locates James Brown’s profile. Appointment is caught in Lagos, where the photographer is in residence.
Escape with vexations and violence
Behind the charismatic travesti, Sabelo Mlangeni discovers a community of artists, stylists, designers and social workers, grouped by necessity to escape the vexations and violence. In these places, the mouise rubs shoulders with glamor, and the style competitions resurrect the Ballroom spirit of the 1960s, when New York’s black gays and Latinos started to display their singularity.
At the head of the Royal House of Allure, a certain Mr Morrison imposes himself as the “mother”, the term of the community to define the one who reigns and watches over the household. “I thought I was going to make the portrait of this family, a family of heart, election,” says Sabelo Mlangeni. He ends up melting into the scenery. “The problem was the absence of electricity,” he says. The flash attracts too much attention. Sometimes the very presence of the camera could be poorly lived. We had to grasp the moments where they felt confident, avoid photographing when mounting tension. “
Some residents are conciliatory, others pose their requirements. Olalere, for example, social worker, claims to be photographed the body and face coated with paint. Tonnex, a young dancer perched on high heels, summons the photographer on the roof, where he deploys his silhouette of voguer.
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