Kingston Modiselle

“I love being peaceful and being at peace as much as I possibly can. This helps me stay sane and grounded.”

Intercru: Where are you from?

Kingston: I’m from Pretoria, South Africa and I’ve lived here most of my life.

Where do you live and work now?

Due to COVID-19, I had to move from Johannesburg, which is where I used to live and work, to Pretoria. But right now, I currently live in my home city Pretoria however, I still work in Johannesburg.

If anything, I kind of work everywhere and anywhere because I’m a freelance photographer. I travel a lot in general so that helps make me a bit of a photographic nomad, although I always edit and compile all my images in the same place which is my home in Pretoria.

How did you get started in photography? What was your first camera?

I feel like everyone starts taking photos in the same way- we all take photos of things we want to remember, or things we find beautiful or even just for the sake of it. I’ve always been interested in all forms of visual media but for me my love of cameras started at a young age with a Sony Cybershot DSC-W5 point-and-shoot that had a 5.1 megapixel sensor (yes, I’m that old). It used to be my parents’ camera but I used it a lot more than they did taking photos of frogs, grass, and really anything because I was so fascinated by how it worked technically, and emotionally too, having the ability to capture a moment in time.

In terms of how I got started doing the type of work I do now, I would say it actually started with movies. I developed an obsession with how cinematographers manipulate scenery to capture a specific idea they have. They’re not bound by weather or location- with the right type of equipment and technical support they can shoot however they want, wherever they want, and I’ve always found that prospect inspiring and freeing at the same time.

So because of my early love of the film look movies have, I started looking for photographers on Flickr. that captured things the way directors of photography do. This is back when Flickr was really popular in the mid 2010s. I came across a variety of different photographers who, at least from my perspective, captured moods and themes more than just plain photos with people in them. I gravitated toward the whimsical-like allure of female portraiture at the time so that’s what I ended up doing since 2015, and it’s what I’m still doing for my main Instagram page.

What’s your favorite part about photography?

I would suppose I love a lot of different aspects about photography, and that’s me just picking at loose ends. I love absolutely everything about it. But if I were to pick my favourite part of the process, that would be the pre-production/production part of a photoshoot, where I get to review the initial RAW files.

Or in the case of shooting film, it’s the simple act of just taking the photo itself because so much preparation and planning has to go into shooting just one photo on one roll of film. I’m a very nostalgic person by nature so I end up spending a lot of time in Photoshop tinkering with every photo to make it look and feel the way I envisioned it would in my head.

I also really love curating a mental image of what I want to take a picture of. From there it’s just the pursuit of trying to create what I imagine in my head, turning that into reality. Every image or set of images for me represents an idea I had that turned into a physical picture. I guess that’s more than one favourite part of photography but I truly don’t think I could pick a single thing I like, it would have to be the first 5 things that come to mind.

What do you love the most about shooting film?

Even though I rarely shoot film, getting the developed photos back is always very exciting for me and makes me extremely giddy. However, I normally shoot most of my shared work with a Canon DSLR that I’ve essentially configured to produce photos that look like film. My choice of lenses influences how I shoot too, I use mostly fixed focal lengths depending on how close or far away I want to be from the subject.

I must say however, that if I could afford to shoot film for all my projects I would.

How would you describe your work overall? Would you say you have a particular style?

I would suppose it’s no secret that all my photos are edited to look like and emulate film and that’s not by accident. I am absolutely obsessed with the ‘film-look’ in general, whatever that means.

I think overall, I would describe my work as a case study in the feeling of nostalgia. I mentioned previously that I love it when photos have a particular mood or theme that’s obvious to the viewer and there is no exception for my work- it is essentially what I strive for. Even though photographs that exhibit specific moods or themes are particular to whatever the artist is trying to communicate, these concepts have very broad and subjective interpretations/meanings.

I sort of narrow it down by trying to capture a nostalgic theme which feels like melancholic joy or remembrance. There are many ways to do this but I chose to use a very modern approach to the film aesthetic of summertime or early evenings indoors. I love capturing intimate moments that have a specific look and feel that everyone can relate to...our most intimate ways of existing essentially.

Things that everyone experiences in life often consist of moments, like what it feels like to let sunshine wash over your face or what it feels like to swim in a lake at sunset. Every intimate moment carries with it a timestamp that’s represented as a feeling and I always look to reveal that through my work.

Who are some of your favorite photographers or artists?

I tend to pull inspiration from various artistic pursuits and I have a deep appreciation for directors and cinematographers but also portrait photographers and painters too. In terms of filmography I really love and take great inspiration from directors like Lynne Ramsey, Steve McQueen, Spike Lee, Spike Jones, Lulu Wang, Rodger Deakins (obviously) and someone like Yorgos Lanthimos.

As for my favourite artists, painters specifically, I have recently become very obsessed with the emptiness and desolate solitude nature of Edward Hopper and René Magritte’s paintings.

And last but not least, I’m inspired everyday by the immense talent I see on my Instagram, some of my favourite portrait photographers on there at the moment are Alessio Albi, Clint Robert, Andre Wagner, Nima Elm, Aubrey Ndiweni, Valeria Myronenko and Angie Couple. I would wager that they all have very similar tastes but their interpretations of the simplest things like the composition of a shot are very different which I appreciate.

What really makes you happy?

I would say solitude above all else. I love being peaceful and being at peace as much as I possibly can. This helps me stay sane and grounded. So things like meditation and the purposeful doing of small mundane tasks help me calm my mind. I’m quite a fan and avid practitioner of Zen Buddhism.

What is the best gift you’ve ever been given?

Definitely the gift of visual media. I have a lot of people to thank in my life when it comes to how I’ve become who I am. My older brother and I love a lot of the same movies so he was a very big influence early on in what I watched and how I interpreted it.

This probably a cheesy answer but definitely just being alive in a time where so many great films exist and where so many great artists have had the chance to share their work with the world. I feel as if I can’t distinguish my passion for photography with it being a job. I love my job and I guess that’s a gift within itself.

What’s your proudest accomplishment?

Please pardon me as I get philosophical for a moment, I’d say my proudest accomplishment would probably be just quite simply being alive.

I’m a person that has suffered greatly in the past at the hands of mental illness, so coming out of that made me feel eternally grateful to just be alive. Everyday, I feel like I have accomplished something, as long as I did my best that day to just live, whether it’d be doing 3 photoshoots or nothing at all I feel really proud of accomplishing the simple act of existing.

If you could travel back in time, when and where would you go?

I feel like with all my talk of nostalgia this is my moment and time to shine with this question.

I think my strange obsession with New York City from 1970 to 1999 needs to be explored further so I’d definitely travel to that specific city in that period. Mostly of out curiosity. I tend to romanticize the idea of New York City in that timeframe and I think it has a lot to do with all the films I watched growing up made in those time periods. Films like Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, or even Home Alone 2 give me a sense of yearning for a time past that I haven’t experienced. I wasn’t even alive back then and I only experienced the ’90s as a baby anyway so I don’t get my obsession either.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

I would definitely lecture my younger self on the absolute importance of trusting oneself. I spent a lot of my early life being anxious about everything and not knowing who I was or what I wanted, and I think now about how that’s deeply concerning in that the only thing one has to really do in life is live with and love oneself.

This basic tenet of existing went over my head as a teen, I wish I could reassure that person back then that everything will work out in general, and things would go a lot better for them if they just trust themselves fully without any reservations.