Casper Kofi
/VISUAL ART/Casper is a self-taught Dutch-Ghanaian photographer mainly working in fashion. Kofie focuses on the representation of cultural diverse male identity and uses portraiture and fashion photography with collaging techniques in order to explore male identity and the ways in which this is expressed. Kofi’s vibrant and colourful work offers diverse yet intimate vignettes of his subjects that often communicate a nostalgic aesthetic. Through the deliberate interplay between distinctive lighting and selective casting, his work paradoxically brings together intimate settings and theatrical qualities, highlighting the vulnerabilities of his subjects as strengths.
PRESENTING
SELECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY WORKS
Taking inspiration from writer Edouard Glissant who insists on opacity as a strategy for the survival of Black people, much of Kofi’s work is informed by his interest in embracing and emphasising intimacy and opacity. He looks for ways to create work that allows my subjects to be opaque, to not be completely understood and defined. A more introspective approach to imagining and representing men, especially Black men or boys on their way to adulthood. Through experiments with color and light, layering and combining images and using different transparencies to reveal or disguise information, Kofi has explored ways to bring in elements of abstraction to encourage viewers to interpret the work more freely.