Over the course of three months, from November 2016 to January 2017, photographer and graphic designer Carey Chanquin captured the coloured creative community in Cape Town in a project that culminated in a photo series called "Curating Coloureds". The 25-year-old says that she was inspired by the people in the Cape Town creative industry who look like her and are thriving in their respective fields. In what has become a celebration of coloured people in a way that is rarely depicted, Chanquin joins the likes of Kelly-Eve Koopman and Sarah Summers who recently launched their "Coloured Mentality" project as a platform for a conversation on coloured identity. Both projects have received welcoming responses online and will hopefully lead the way in creating these kinds of platforms for expression for other young coloured creatives as well.
"There's so much that coloured people have to offer that isn't always seen or brought to light. I thought if I could capture just a few, that I'd be able to share moments of them in their element or doing what they do best, what they enjoy and most importantly them just being themselves," says Chanquin, describing the project. "I really wanted to capture people in their element — in surroundings they are comfortable in — as much as possible".
After publishing the images online, Chanquin says she has been blown away by the response. It was something she did not anticipate when she first sat down to put the concept together. "I made a list of people that I thought would be dope to capture. I got in touch with them and they were keen to shoot, so I went for it."
Chanquin has been shooting for about five years now, but it's only in the last three that she's really sunken her teeth into photography as a serious hobby and "Curating Coloureds" is a first-of-its-kind project for her. For the specific look and feel of this shoot she tried something different and shot on a disposable camera and captured a portrait and landscape image for each person.
Publishing on her Instagram page, Vimeo and VSCO profiles, Chanquin says there is more where this came from and is getting ready to release the second set of photographs from this series. She shared some of the images from the first set with us here: