Chronicle Chroma
Camo is the first publication to chronicle the work of Thandiwe Muriu, celebrating her vibrant portraits that combine cultural textiles and beauty ideologies. Muriu takes us on a colorful, reflective journey through her world as a woman living in modern Kenya as she reinterprets contemporary African portraiture.
As the sole woman operating in the male-dominated advertising photography industry in Kenya, Muriu has repeatedly confronted questions about the role of women in society, the place of tradition, and her self-perception. These experiences inspired her project of cultural reflection: the Camo series, which pushed new boundaries in her photography and led to a deeply personal artistic journey.
The compelling, fully saturated photographs in this book confront issues surrounding identity while seeking to redefine female empowerment through Muriu's choice of materials. These constructed images are not digital manipulations but physical sets incorporating African Ankara wax textiles as backdrops and custom-tailored clothing and headdresses. At the forefront of her practice is using textiles to make her subjects disappear and serve as a canvas for reflection on identity and its evolution over time.
Thandiwe Muriu, born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, discovered photography at age fourteen, experimenting with her father's old Nikon camera. Self-taught, she immersed herself in books and video tutorials, learning from every resource she could find, as Kenya did not have any formal photography schools. By age seventeen, she was working professionally, and by twenty-three, she had shot her first solo advertising campaign. By 2019, she was photographing campaigns for some of the largest companies in East Africa. Since then she has received multiple commissions for collaborations with brands such as Apple, Dior, and Lavazza. Muriu has exhibited her work internationally and has been featured in numerous publications and on television.
