Fabrice Monteiro

Raised in Benin to a Beninese father and a Belgian mother, Dakar-based photographer Fabrice Monteiro had a childhood shaped by multiple cultures. After an introduction to fashion and photography during a stint working as a professional model, Monteiro has taken on photographic portraiture as an artistic practice. Drawn to the intimacy and sensitivity it reveals, Monteiro creates work that bridges the gap between photojournalism and fashion photography, often referencing his African homeland.

Photography came naturally to him, first as a professional model, he became aware of the complexity of the composition, the lighting and the posture. Passed behind the lens, Fabrice Monteiro's images are at the intersection between photojournalism and fashion photography. "The diversity of my origins is my first source of inspiration. Relations between Africa and Europe have constantly fluctuated between attraction and rejection, empowerment and denial, recognition and anger. They have never been indifferent. The history of the African-European people over the last centuries, that I have inherited the complexity, is my main source of inspiration".

Fabrice Monteiro's latest works "8 Mile Wall" explore some of the stereotypical ways in which Africans were, and in some places continue to be, displayed. The series was inspired by a conversation he had with his father as a boy when he realized that, as a black man, the only way to be treated with consideration in Europe at the time was to wear a three-piece suit. Despite the rising brightness regarding Africa's prospects Monteiro believes that, in a way, we are still trying to wear three-piece suits.

Submitted by projects+gallery