What I continually find so interesting about Johannesburg are the unique stories which almost each and every inhabitant seems to have. What this rich tapestry of cultures reminds me of is the importance of storytelling–preserving the narratives of our cultures through creative storytelling–something which my next interviewee for CEC, Nondumiso Shange, specialises in to its core and has crafted an entire visual language around.

K-pop, Tumblr, Hong Kong, disposable cameras, the internet, a yearn for travel.

Those are just some of the things which characterised a good portion of our virtual to-and-fro–and elements which I think influenced Nondu from a very young age to discover who she was and amount into the creative which she is today. Nondumiso Shange is a KZN-born and JHB-raised photographer & creative director whose future aspiration is to become a film director. Someone I discovered through the sheer ingeniousness of their craft and someone I had the privilege of befriending early into my personal journey in Johannesburg a few years ago. Personally, what stands out most to me throughout all of Nondu’s visual outputs–are her colour grading abilities. Her work has managed to hone into a new fresh visual aesthetic; one which is cinematically-inclined and highly-saturated, vividly bringing out her subjects. During our conversation, she mentions:

“At the beginning of this year at the Children of Midas exhibition, Mishaal mentioned to me that my colour grading is really good and it’s something I can leverage off of. From there onwards, I placed an emphasis on my grading and how I colour my images. I feel like in South Africa there is already a prominent existing way in which most photographers colour grade their images so I was also trying to set myself apart.”

Photography of Makhundai by Nondumiso Shange

Zooming back into Nondumiso’s backstory, after leaving Durban at the age of 3 years old, she ventured into the metropolitan which is Johannesburg which has served as home until today. Cinema & cyberspace have always helped within Nondu’s search for identity and connecting her own lineage. Throughout some of her personal projects she manages to express this yearning for identity and personal expression through cinematic storytelling. Her work with Johannesburg-based brand, Makhundai, being an apt example of her bespoke technique of highly saturated images juxtaposed by backdrops which exhibit her incredible colour grading abilities and achieve the end goal of bringing out her subjects.

From being involved in a wide range of creative programmes with entities such as RMB and Hypebeast Africa, to more recently shooting the eponymous MANOR print magazine x Zoe Modiga cover under the tutelage of Trevor Stuurman–Nondumiso Shange exhibits a plethora of hunger, imagination and innovation, matched with a massive capacity for growth. Remember the iconic Meji Meji story I covered for CEC not too long ago? Yup–she shot the vast majority of the Nigerian brands South African editorials. This shoot draws vast parallels with Nondu’s most recent #WhySettleForOneMonth campaign shoot–she has adopted and developed a “Wes Anderson-esque” aesthetic towards her visual collateral–something which I find extremely intriguing about her work. She mentions:

“I’m inspired by old Chicken Licken advertisements. I like Wes Anderson. The usage of colour within his work kinda inspired me. I decided when I shoot studio work I wanted to have prominent colour work. All of those things have inspired the pockets of work which I choose and me wanting to make people feel some type of way when seeing my work.”

Tinx Eboka photographed by Nondumiso Shange

The recent personal project which she undertook, ‘Why Settle For One Month’, represented how Nondumiso’s work martyrs for the upcoming generation of women photographers, visual artists and film directors. Inspired by a merge of her love of K-pop as well as a celebration of femme creatives who have impacted and influenced her journey thus far, Nondumiso further explains:

“I believe that the creative industry in South Africa is very fantastic but I still believe that it is very male-dominated. So I decided, let me do something by myself, out of my own pocket, which highlights and showcases these creative women I have met along my way who have been very kind to me and very inspiring as well. ”

Nondumiso’s work is ushering a new generation of creativity in. One which is characterised by a poignant woman’s creative strength within a male-dominated industry. Upon many other creative endeavours which Nondumiso has and will be undertaking–one is a 2-month Art residency with a Japanese University for a prestigious programme which she was selected for. The scope of her successful application for this residency considers the final season tragedy on popular Japanese television show, Terrace House, which was the suicide of one of the members of the show due to xenophobic cyberbullying attacks which stemmed from their mixed Indonesian & Japanese heritage. Nondu’s work aims to further explore these systemic xenophobic cultural links–an intelligent approach which is bound to yield interesting results.

Shifting to present-day Nondumiso and her stance is as clear as ever. Exploring filmmaking and the world of directing movies is next. Closing off our endearing conversation, I ask her “You really wanna direct movies?” to which she quickly corrects me: “I will direct movies”.

Written by Odwa Zamane

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