Yesterday was a gloomy, rainy day in Stockholm - which served as the perfect opportunity to get things done around the apt - like finally hanging these photographs by our friend Nicho Södling, a talented Swedish fashion and lifestyle photographer. ”Vanity of Man” is his first showing and we fell in love with these pieces.
You can read more about Nicho and “Vanity of Man” in the press release below:
Vanity of Man
Fashion from nothing: unique fashion portraits of people from tribes of the Omo river delta in soutwestern Ethiopia by photographer Nicho Södling.
Time flies, fashion changes, trends come and go. Only our human vanity remains.
Is that really so?
Well, the accute vanity and passionate pre-occupation with personal looks and appaearances was the single most powerful impression that struck Swedish fashion and lifestyle photographer Nicho Södling when he traveled in the remote, previously isolated Omo delta in Southwestern Ethiopia, near the Sudanese border, visiting the tribes of Bena, Karo, Hamer, Surma, Besheda and Mursi - people whose contact with the outside world has been sparse and whose lifestyles in many ways remain much the same as during the Stone Age.
Nicho, whose father is Ethiopian, was taken by how, despite the tremendous cultural differences between these tribespeople and his own Swedish contemporaries, the similarities were even much more apparent - not least in the pure vanity and eagerness to express status and cultural belonging through looks and fashion. In fact, these people, who have very little, seemed if not more obsessed with fashion and looks than ourselves, who have it all. Certainly, their creativity and skills in expressing themselves through their appearances were much greater. No stylist, hair stylist, make-up or tattoo artist could come close to matching the stunning power and beauty of these looks. Our “urban tribes” all appear quite stale, tame and pathetic in comparison.
Nicho Södling has conducted two extensive photographic expeditions through the vast Omo delta, shooting a volumnious suite of portraits of tribespeople. Mostly photographed in classic manner against a white backdrop, all on mid-format celluloid film, his portraits really capture the energy, elegance, pride, urgency, pain and glamour of these looks, allowing the outrageous personal expressions to speak for themselves.
The exhibition at Abectita corsettfabrik konstmuseum in Borås is the first time that Nicho Södling’s unique suite of portraits is shown in public, in a series of 52 prints, many in large and some in monumental formats.
