To promote its 2015 Autumn Winter collection, Ben Sherman released a fashion film shot in Johannesburg in collaboration with a team of African talents. These include South African American director Meja Shoba, the Congolese musician Pierre Kwenders, and the Johannesburg-based collective Boys of Soweto (BOS), featuring as protagonists and stylists. The two-minute film takes place on a sports field, where three …

Stacey Tyrell is a Canadian artist who uses photography to explore themes of race, identity, and heritage in the African diaspora. In her most recent work, “Backra Bluid”, she envisions the hybrid lineage of Afro-diasporans, creating a gallery of self-portraits in which she impersonates her white ancestors. The titles of the photographs report only the name and age of each subject, leaving the viewer to guess the history …

Recently, I have had the pleasure to get back in touch with some wonderful colleagues from my previous research project (conducted at the Centre for Digital Cultures of Leuphana University) on audiovisual paratexts. They invited me to contribute to their blog Watching the Trailer that investigates the viewing/consuming context of trailers (what place, what media, what else is occurring and what comes after), and …

Visuals Yinka Shonibare – Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 1998 Video From Dapper to Dope panel at Schomburg Center. A conversation on black masculine style in Harlem steered by Michaela Angela Davis.

Dynamic Africa, a platform that focuses on the popular culture and visual aesthetics of contemporary Africanness, has recently reblogged on its Tumblr account a photostory by Jérémy Barniaud on black male fashion. No garment openly invokes ‘traditional’ African items, but the creative syncretism that fuses past and present sartorial languages recalls the hipster aesthetics of acclaimed street style icons from the continents, like Loux …