Ze

At university I wrote my dissertation on identity and queer theory and the trend of pushing against generational dogma with regard to personal identity.

I wanted to create a set of images as part of a campaign that plays with masculine and feminine imagery and could be that base of the beginnings of a conversation about why we are the way we are.

I decided on Ze as the over arching name for the project as at the time it was suggested as the preferred pronoun for an individual who doesn’t want to identify as either gender.

I knew I wanted to feature people in the photography and have them as bare as possible to give a sense of stripping back layers and to illustrate that it’s possible that people might be very different underneath what they choose to portray to the world. I also played with colour specifically pink and blue on the lips of the models, attempting to demonstrate the gender specific nature of seemingly benign things and provoke the question around the assigning of gender to certain behaviours, objects and colours.

The presence of flowers in the imagery came from some creative studies and experiments I had done as well as a few photographic projects. Flowers are typically viewed as a feminine object, something that is bought for woman and (traditionally) that only woman are allowed to appreciate, despite flowers essentially being the male & female reproductive organs of the plant world. I found this to be an interesting paradox and though it would make for interesting imagery. Especially when contrasting to an extreme masculine symbol such as the stag antlers which other than being aesthetically impressive also conjure up images of competing for female attention, hunting and providing. Ze was featured in the end of year show at The University of Greenwich.

Label and logo design for the tequila brand “Vaca Negra”.

Imagine dragons’ Night Visions album has strong themes of depression, reinvention and being lost. I worked on a series of textures with various different mediums and then adjusted them in post to find a visual stye that would best communicate these elements.

Fit londoners brochure design.

App development (ongoing).

Design for packaging while at Duronic.