I was commissioned to create dignified portraits following the lives of different second-hand clothes dealers in Nigeria and Uganda. The project featured  spotlights on multiple second-hand clothes vendors giving an in-depth look into the clothing being dumped into African clothing markets. This trade has all but rendered local fashion industries obsolete in Uganda. The aim was to avert the ‘poverty gaze’ that is often associated with depicting Africans in photography and other visual mediums. I hoped to bring out this feeling of dignity by focusing on the textures, patterns and beauty of the materials the subjects were working with. I incorporated scans of real multicolored fabrics before overlaying them with hand-drawn digital  illustrations to create new and aesthetically pleasing compositions.

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