“This book is an insight to my journey thus far, it is a book about women,” says Nadine Ijewere on her first monograph, Our Own Selves. “My work has always had underlying themes of identity and diversity, celebrating our differences, reframing what beauty has stereotypically been and creating a space to elevate women of colour.”

This lovingly-produced tome - for which the Nataal art direction team were thrilled to collaborate on for its design - is one that vibrates with colour, joy and elegance. The London-born artist has fast become renowned for her sensitive and uplifting images for the likes of Vogue, Wall Street Journal, Valentino and Dior as well as for her award-winning personal projects that have explored her dual Nigerian and Jamaican heritage. Our Own Selves brings all of these worlds together in a glorious celebration of her single-minded and inspiring vision. Read on for an exclusive excerpt from the book’s opening essay, a conversation between Ijewere and her friend, Dazed’s executive editorial director Lynette Nylander.

LN: Do you remember the first photo you took?

NI: Yeah, it was a radiator in school! We were learning about depth of field and I got this camera from an old car boot sale in Canterbury. It was an old 35mm camera. A Zenith, I think that’s how it’s pronounced. Russian, made in the USSR, 35mm camera with a couple of lenses for fifteen or twenty pounds. I think my passions for taking pictures just started to unfold more.

I’d always loved looking through fashion magazines. My Mum’s very into that. I think at that point, when I started exploring photography in the magazines which I’d flick through, I would think to myself, “Well...” I never saw anyone that really looked like my friends or anyone I could relate to in those images. If they were people of colour or Black women they were all light-skinned, and had European features. If they had curly hair, it was blow-dried straight to match the white women. None of my friends really looked like that. When I was learning photography, we’d explore different techniques. We’d do still life, we’d do portraits, we’d do landscapes. I was drawn to photographing people the most. So I then started shooting my friends. We’d get suitcases full of clothes from our wardrobes and we’d drag it to the park and we’d just take pictures and have fun. I became the designated photographer and I quickly realised I didn’t want to study medicine, so I had to redo a year to be able to do art so I could study photography, but I never ever saw the possibility of photography as a career.

LN: What were you trying to do?

NI: I actually have no idea! I think in my third year, you get to explore as part of your dissertation. That was my point of thinking, “I’m just going to take photographs of people who look like me and question why there’s only one type of beauty?”

I was sick of the stereotypes. In an editorial of Black woman you’d see there’d always be references to animal prints or animals. The same for Asian women. It was this connotation of being obedient. I started to question, “Well these must have come from somewhere”, and that led me on to my study of the other. Flipping those ideas in reverse, if that makes sense. It was taking elements of these stereotypes, if you like, and then shooting them on different identities and different people. So, you could never really know where someone is from, you never really know their true identity. Proposing

the question of “Why is it that we place these stereotypes on certain types of people?” From there I just started taking pictures with my friends, celebrating hair with someone who has an amazing afro for a beauty story. I really felt like I resonated with that because even though I had my own relationship with my own hair and my own identity, I didn’t want to conform to what the industry was saying was beautiful. From that exploration of my socials, brands and the galleries became interested in my work.

LN: There is such nuance in people’s individual experience. For example, there’s such a whimsy and lightness to the sort of world that you’re creating. How conscious of that are you about creating a purposeful kind of world?

NI: I think it’s just something that comes naturally with my style of photography. It’s something that’s quite fluid, but I always want to capture someone in the most elevated and beautiful way possible. I like to play around with composition and angles. I want to create something that excites me. I get super anxious before every shoot I do; I can never go in and just take the picture. There will always be this feeling I need to push for more, whether that’s through what I get the person I’m photographing to do or the emotion I’m trying to evoke or the perspective or the composition. I struggle to take just a “straight-up” image. I think that can be interesting, but I couldn’t do stories and things that are all the way through like that. There has to be something dynamic in the photography aspect as well.

LN: How often do you get to shoot your own personal work?

NI: Maybe I’ll shoot a personal project once a year or every two years. I just think it’s when the time is right. That’s how I get projects like Tallawah or the Same/Difference projects. It has to be something where I have a concept that I’m really, really passionate about. Fashion photography is very male- dominated and I think I do what I do in the hopes that it just encourages more women of colour to pick up a camera and feel that they can be photographers, stylists and make-up artists. There’s space for them in this industry. We need more of you please.

Nadine Ijewere: Our Own Selves is published by Prestel on 5 October 2021

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Published on 02/10/2021