Photographer Lucie Rox and make-up artist Crystabel Riley collaborate to create new zine WATER••COLOUR.
Based on Afrofuturist merfolk novella, The Deep by Rivers Solomon, WATER••COLOUR submerges the viewer in a fantastical world beneath the water’s surface. The Deep portrays an underwater merfolk utopia formed by the descendants of enslaved women thrown overboard slave ships.
Rox and Riley investigate the interaction between the body and the environment, set within this rich and wondrous Afrofuturistic reimagining.
Rox told AnOther mag,
“In my head, I kept going back to the characters of the books: Afrofuturistic merfolks. We kept the reference quite loose as we didn’t want it to be so literal, but the poetic atmosphere of the book stayed with me for a while through the project.”
The zine features models Ajok Daing and Akuol Deng Atem. Riley approaches her makeup looks with a zero-waste frame, using clay, sea salt and gold leaf. Skin and Blackness are the focus, illuminated by shimmering ocean hues. Here, Daing and Atem metamorphose into something mythological. The photographs feature silicone designs from Sinéad O’Dwyer, Di Petsa’s wet look dress, silhouettes from Supriya Lele, and Alighieri’s shell jewellery.
On the science fiction roots of the project, Rox said,
“Afrofuturism gave us an interesting frame through which to look at beauty and its representation linked to Black womanhood,
“Less in terms of aesthetic, but in the idea that we can imagine our own kind of future, our own kind of visual poetics with which we can try and push the boundaries of what Black and beauty imagery can mean in relation to each other.”
Source: AnOther mag
Check out some of the shots below:
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