Emerging Talent: Double Life + Self Portraits of Ophelia Olive […or rather, Nekole Kemelle]

Welcome to a series of posts I’m calling Emerging Talent – where I’m spotlighting the work of photographers and filmmakers on the rise. Some are shooters that me and my spies will uncover from 500px or Flickr – others might already be shooting campaigns, but in both cases I don’t care about what the “industry” says. This is simply work I like. IMHO their careers are either on the move or are about to be. I get great pleasure out of seeing my peers make great stuff and I enjoy sharing their work. In many cases I draw inspiration from them as well. I hope you’ll join me in all this.

The first feature in this series is Ophelia Olive, a fashion photographer based out of New York City who is incredibly skilled at getting in front of her own lens. But wait, there’s more. Her real name is Nekole Kemelle, and despite the popularity of her fashion model counterpart “character” Ophelia Olive, there are very few details to be garnered about her on the internet. IMHO this only increases her mystique — and as art has the way of doing this — that mystique bleeds into our understanding of her images. Click through the gallery on the image tabs above to see what I mean.

While her work explores a myriad of subjects, I am most deeply intrigued by her self portraits. Anyone who has ever tried to artistically photograph themselves (I haven’t – I’m terrified of that) would know even better than those of us who haven’t attempted it – know just how difficult it can be. Plus, there’s a level of “meta” to the image that’s as intellectually gripping as the art itself.

Keep up the good work Opheilia Nekole Kemelle. Impressive stuff.

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[Want to be featured in this Emerging Talent series? Don’t send me emails about it. The best way to get noticed is to a) do good, groundbreaking work; b)socialize that work; c)in particular post it to your own social channels but call out this series or link back to us with your desire to show up here. We’ll get that info via Google Alerts and pingbacks. Thx.]