Firstborns of a Democracy

It's 2024 and South Africa is celebrating its 30th year of democracy. This series invites you to meet the post-apartheid generation whom Nelson Mandela fought so hard to liberate; a visual proof, so to speak, of Mandela's ''living'' legacy. The portrait models featured in this series were all born during the momentous year of 1994. All South Africans born in 1994 and thereafter are known in South Africa as the ''Born Frees'' - and with good reason: 1994 will forever be marked as the year in which Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected president after his political party won the country's first multi-racial election. The formation of a democratic South Africa was the final nail in the apartheid coffin. To find these very first Born Frees of South Africa's democracy, I walked the streets and also visited universities and college campuses. All the images were photographed outside in the open using natural lighting, then grayscaled and edited in photoshop.