RESOURCES

When Cole Ndelu left her secure branding job a year ago to pursue fine-art photography full time, she didn’t think she needed a plan.

 

“Everybody says to make a plan—I was like, ‘Nah, I’m good, obviously that’s all that matters,’” she says, laughing. “That is not all that matters.”

 

Luckily, Ndelu is a quick study, and in just the past year, she has picked up on a lot of the lessons that help artists create the infrastructure needed to succeed independently—especially through working on her portfolio and commission project for the Adobe Stock Artist Development Fund, a $500,000 creative commission program from Adobe Stock. As an expression of Adobe’s commitment to inclusion, we’ve selected artists who identify with and expertly depict diverse communities within their work.

Click above to watch a video about the artist.

Part of the Advocates program, an effort led by Adobe Stockto promote and encourage the production of inclusive, global imagery, the Artist Development Fund offers selected artists financial support to produce ambitious new creative projects. To help promote the commissioned artwork and expand the availability of inclusive imagery, the work is available exclusively on Adobe Stock for one year for free.

 

Ndelu is one of 40 artists selected for funding in 2021. Her commission project, inspired by Adobe Stock’s Celebration of Self creative brief, depicts Black women and men in intimate, dreamy portraits, and touches on themes of intimacy and sustainability.

 

 

Global representation for South Africans.

Though the stock commission project was a departure from the fine art and fashion portraiture that Ndelu continues to do, it she says it offered an opportunity for wider representation of her native South Africa in a global image market.

 

“I work in branding, and I know how much brands spend on stock, so I know how much money stock makes—and in South Africa, so much stock is bought from international stock companies,” says Ndelu. “It is important for us to have the power to share our own narratives, and to have those perspectives become global and mainstream. Putting money behind people and projects from marginalized communities broadens access to that power. It is important for us to represent and project ourselves out into the world.”

 

She continues, “I used to get really frustrated: I see billboards, and I’m like, that is very obviously not a South African. And yet, it’s being sold to us, just because [the model is] Black. Black people in the States and Black people in South Africa don’t look the same. A South African who sees me knows that I’m South African. With this project [for Artist Development Fund], I was thinking about my contribution to a visual archive of Blackness, of Black experience, especially as a South African. It is so important that Adobe Stock is providing an opportunity for artists from marginalized communities to document their own stories, stories that will live and be experienced on the global stage. I wondered, how many South African contributors does Adobe Stock have? And what is the potential reach of work by and about South Africans?”

Image source: Adobe Stock / Cole Ndelu

A stock commission becomes a family affair.

When lockdowns in Johannesburg eased slightly, Ndelu returned to Durban, South Africa, where she was raised. Working to produce 500 stock images under COVID conditions became a collective undertaking. Ndelu assembled a team that included her sister as production manager, a close friend as production assistant and make-up artist, and her mother as head of catering.

 

“I want to be able to create access into those spaces, and I also want to get to a point where I create spaces that employ women,” says Ndelu. “So right now, through my productions, I hire people. Just recently I’ve been able to start paying models, and paying make-up artists, and managers—and so the bigger the jobs I get, the more personnel I can have on my team."

 

For Ndelu, this engenders an experience of working in the space where everyone feels safe and heard, and where they can be vulnerable.

 

“I really try to be somebody, where if I’m working with somebody, they can come to me and say, 'I’m having a bad day,' and we can talk about it,” she says. “And also I want to be able to have a bad day with my crew."

 

This vulnerability is evident in Ndelu’s portraiture, which conveys a sense of intimacy with her subjects. Sometimes this is reflective of a real-life connection—as with Sami, her friend and make-up artist, who is also the subject of some of her portraits—but other times it has to do with the values Ndelu has developed around safety, recognition, and vulnerability in the shoot-space.

Image source: Adobe Stock / Cole Ndelu

“A lot of time there’s an existing relationship, and if there isn’t, I try to work really fast to close the gap and make the person feel close to me,” she says. “So we’ll talk for a long time, and I’ll do a lot of work getting to know them and getting us feeling comfortable, so that we can have that intimacy or that moment—even if it’s just one shot, at least we just had that moment where there’s a really pure connection, and I’ve given them something and they’ve given me something, and then it just clicks.”

 

 

Building a shoot with pins and connections.

This sense of connection comes through even in Ndelu’s fashion editorials, which draw equally on aesthetics, mood, and balance of vibrant colors. While the artist likes to leave room for spontaneity during the shoot, it occurs within a highly researched framework established by mood boards and pre-shoot briefings.

 

“My Pinterest is crazy,” she says. “I am looking at pictures often, and I’m always cataloging pictures and setting up shots, and just collecting images and images and images. Then if it’s specific to a shoot, I’ll go back to whatever I had saved to my mood boards and my references and say, That’s the idea I had been incubating—I was probably waiting for the right person or the right moment.”

Image source: Adobe Stock / Cole Ndelu

Once she finds her subject, the mood boards come out again to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

 

“It helps when I’m explaining to models what we’re trying to achieve,” she says. “This [the board] is where, if we put our picture, our picture should sit really comfortably in this category of work.”

 

 

Growing her creative practice.

It seems that the commission project for Adobe Stock Artist Development Fund was an opportunity for Ndelu to develop and solidify her professional practices—from tools like creating a more structured shot-by-shot list; to styling processes like consulting on make-up design in advance in order to streamline shoots with multiple models; to leveraging bigger jobs to make bigger teams that pick up logistical elements of the shoot, leaving Ndelu free to handle the camera.

 

“It is taking me to a new level of working, where I think it would be a really bad idea to try and do everything myself,” says Ndelu. “I don’t think I would have wanted to do everything by myself—just trying to see myself doing make-up, and also making sure people are fed, and also making sure everybody is on set on time. And to be doing that for a couple of weeks, and then editing, and shooting—I’m like, no, that’s actually crazy. I need to give myself the room and the space to do the things I need to do, which is ensure the picture. Now that I have worked like this, it’s hard to imagine working differently. Because all those people are really important, in terms of bringing that vision together. And now I’m like, these are my standards.”