The South African artist and documentary photographer Lee-Ann Olwage has produced several series with an activist and emancipatory slant. Her work gravitates around gender and identity, but she also touches upon the universal issue of dementia. Her empathetic and empowering work won her the Sony World Awards in 2023 and a World Press Photo in 2024. We talked to Lee-Ann while she was working on new projects in Central Asia, exploring societal changes in Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

‍

Published in issue #3 2024, Invisible Threads

‍

From a young age, the community expects young girls to get a husband and have children. But they have dreams and need a supportive and empowering environment to grow. Lee-Ann Olwage worked in her series, The Right To Play, with schoolgirls from a non-profit organisation that leverages education to empower girls in Kenya. They empower girls from rural communities through educational, health, and leadership initiatives. Olwage explains the origin of the series: “Gates Notes asked me to direct a short documentary on Dr Kakenya Ntaiya, the founder. When she was five years old, she was already engaged. That's how young these girls get told what their life would look like. Around age 12, they get married and leave school. Kakenya escaped child marriage and told her father she wanted to continue schooling. Eventually, she studied in the United States and earned a PhD in education. This kind of achievement was unheard of in the Masamara region where she grew up. The arrangement was that she had to ask every man in her village for permission to go and study. And somehow, they all said yes, but the agreement was that she had to return and give back to her community. After she returned to Kenya, she started the school to support girls.”

‍

Flowers as symbols

After she worked on the documentary, Lee-Ann Olwage wanted to work with the schoolgirls. However, she faced the challenge of not falling into the trap of showing stories of poverty and misery in Africa. “African people are often portrayed in their worst moments. And I did not want to do that. I met girls who were getting married and who were undergoing female genital mutilation. I did not want to document that. I wanted to show girls who are changing that story. I wanted to treat this sensitive cultural topic in a new, interesting way.”

‍

The Right To Play series shows the schoolgirls dressed in an equal red coloured uniform with pink, red and purple flowers scattered on the re-photographed print, symbolising the girls’ playful dreams. “I was investigating a way to show initiatives coming from that community. That's where the idea for the flowers came from. I wanted to find a visual way to talk about a well-known topic. Flowers are symbols of the feminine but also of fragility. For each girl, it was a way of reclaiming their story by saying: I will not be a wife. I have other dreams.”

‍

When Olwage put up her studio in the school hall, it appeared the girls had a clear idea of how they wanted me to portray them. “One girl walked straight in, climbed onto the chair and said, “I am ready for my picture.” That was such an amazing symbol of her confidence.”

Seeing the results immediately on her laptop made the girls imagine new playful poses. “The great thing about digital photography is this immediate conversation around the work.” After the photoshoot, the girls collected flowers to put on their photographs, but they got flat and dead when Lee-Ann returned home. So, she collected fresh flowers and placed them on the printed works to re-photograph them.

‍

‍The big forget

Dementia is seen worldwide as an enormous threat to older people, worsening because of the longer lifespan of the population—an increase in global population ageing results in more people at risk of developing dementia. In African countries, the symptoms of dementia are sometimes associated with madness and superstitious beliefs, stigmatising people with dementia. To counteract this, Lee-Ann Olwage made the project The Big Forget about dementia in Africa. She won the 2024 World Press Award, Stories of Africa, with the story of ‘Dada Paul’ (91) in Madagascar, who lived with dementia for 11 years and is cared for by his daughter.

‍

Lee-Ann Olwage tells how she came across the idea for the project: “My partner told me a story about a Himba woman from Namibia who was chained in her village for approximately 20 years because her community feared her; they did not understand what was happening to her. A newspaper article reported that she probably had dementia, but people in the community did not understand the symptoms; they thought she was going crazy or possessed by witchcraft. I decided to look for her in Namibia to hear her story and understand how her family understood her symptoms. While spending time with people in her community, they said there are others like her that the community has chained. They asked whether I wanted to see them. I did not want to photograph that because it would stigmatise her and her people. Instead, I did a positive project about dementia and how people cared for the old members of the community. I spent the last four years documenting such stories in Namibia, Ghana and Madagascar to understand the impression of different communities about the disease. I also worked with traditional healers, local doctors and nurses to know how they bridge the gap between medical knowledge and their cultural beliefs.”

‍

Olwage published her series in multiple magazines, including Der Spiegel in Germany, Geo magazine, and National Geographic. Her series received reactions and reviews from people worldwide because they found it relatable. “I think that's a topic we can all understand. It's important for me to have those universal threads in all my work where whether you are part of that community or not, you can still understand that particular story.”

‍

‍Black Drag Magic

Another story by Lee-Ann Olwage also touches on stigmatisation and prejudice: the story about gender identity in South Africa. Black Drag Magic is a collaborative project she made with drag artist and activist Belinda Qaqamba Kafassie. The project tells the stories of black, queer, gender-nonconforming and transgender people who grew up in the townships of South Africa. It visualises the need for the African lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQIA+) community to find their identities irrespective of their backgrounds. “On paper, South Africa has the most liberal constitution in Africa. We have the most comprehensive protection for gay rights, such as gay marriage and child adoption by gay couples. On paper, it looks perfect. But I found that people's daily life was very different. There is a lot of violence, discrimination and harassment. I wanted to show places where transgender and queer people feel the most beautiful and understood. I followed Miss Drag South Africa, travelling for four days on a bus with 60 other drag queens. For me, this experience was entirely out of my comfort zone. I am timid, so this was very different from photographing a pageant for one night.”

‍

It surprised Olwage that her relationship with the drag queens shifted because they saw her dedication to the work. The community entirely accepted her. The activist Belinda came to her, and they decided to make a photo project in the township. “We started brainstorming the series, and Belinda gathered other drag artists. We worked on it together. Initially, I was concerned about the safety of everybody because we were going to places where hate crimes had happened and where people had been assaulted or murdered. But Belinda rightly said if they did not reclaim these spaces, it would be as if they did not exist. It is hard for them that their cultural surrounding denies their sexual identity. We'd shot the whole series in four hours. We shot the entire series in four hours and had to move quickly because of safety concerns. We were quite surprised by how the people in the community responded to us; many were curious.”

‍

We photographed the Black Drag Magic in the community's public space, where they usually experienced discrimination. The creation of the photographs for Black Drag Magic became an act of activism to reclaim the public space in the community of the township and to stand up against discrimination, harassment and violence against black ‘queer’ people.

‍

The power of the image

The importance and power of photography of the kind of subjects Olwage photographs are related to the way images operate in our society and psychology. By looking at pictures, the spectator can take time to absorb the subjects and become accustomed to the unknown, letting go of stubborn and ingrained prejudices. Photography can create a new mental image in the mind of the audience. Lee-Ann's stance on photography’s ubiquitous power: “I think photography is such a relatable medium because we can look at a picture and mostly understand it regardless of the language we speak or where we come from. We can look at pictures and understand them. Seeing yourself portrayed as affirming and celebratory in an image is essential for your journey because it gives you a sense of relevance. If we look at our history, images have informed how we understand the world and think history has played out. Photography has played such a key part in that. When we speak about queer identity and incorporate it through photography, it creates a new narrative which is not limited to the single story we've been told. It creates new stories. In that way, it becomes a powerful medium for change and awareness—public awareness.”

‍

About

Lee-Ann Olwage is a visual storyteller from South Africa who uses collaborative storytelling to explore themes relating to gender and identity. She is interested in using the medium of photography as a mode of co-creation and celebration. With her long term projects, she aims to create a space where people she collaborates with can play an active part in the creation of images they feel tells their stories in a way that is affirming and celebratory.

‍

More information