Naturally Afro, a project by photographer Rocio Chacon and Natalya Moosa, aims to celebrate afro hair by bringing together women from various backgrounds to learn about hair care and other topics.
Rocio Chacon is a photographer who expresses herself with portraiture, dance, arts and design. She embarks on personal projects that orbit around ideas and concepts of contemporary culture: realities and issues that surround her and the people she relates to.
With portraiture she focus on the process of discovering the subject in front of the camera, making the photo session an intimate moment of connection and conversation, a way to empower through visual representation.
"In this project I collaborated with Natalya Moosa, DJ, teacher and founder of The Organic Afro, a space to learn and exchange knowledge about afro hair care. With this shoot we wanted to celebrate natural afro hair: its beauty and its power as a symbol of resistance towards western beauty standards and one of the most powerful symbols claiming black beauty."
Women with different experiences that had embraced their hair as it grows naturally we're invited for this project. The session became an uplifting meeting among women, black and white, that ignited conversations around experiences related to afro hair and blackness: the empowerment of not modifying one's own natural look; the feeling of coherence of how you look and how you feel within yourself; the feeling of self-care when caring and learning about your body.
“As a white woman my place was the one of the listener: to acknowledge and understand better what have been the experiences around beauty for other women. In understanding these experiences and feelings, in knowing better about the history attached to beauty practices and habits, there is a lot to unlock about racist issues that still arise today in our societies.” Says Rocio.
These types of interactions are believed to promote healing and shedding of patriarchal and colonial programming, and there is learning, exchange and communication through a creative process.
See photos from this project below
Models _ Natalya Moosa, Any Nachindandy and Chantel Graham
MUA _ Viviane Melo
Photography Assistant _ Ila Falli