Photographer Campbell Addy Charts His Oeuvre in SCAD Fash's New Exhibit

Walking into SCAD Fash's latest exhibit on Campbell Addy's work feels like a reverie from the very first moment. A dimly lit entrance and hallway leaves guests at the foot of an oversized print version of "The Nature of Ghana." In it, a woman stands firmly, clad in magenta, in front of a waterfall frozen in time. It's no wonder the exhibition has an otherworldly feeling. For the British-Ghanaian photographer, who is especially well-known in the fashion world, daydreams are crucial to work.

"I'm always in la-la land," he says, joking that it's the Pisces in him. Dreams often inspire Addy's work, or give clues, but they rarely lead to a direct image, he explains, unlike daydreams that tend to deliver something more tangible.

The Stillness of Elegance—which debuted April 4 at the Atlanta museum—marks Addy's U.S. solo debut. It's organized into four sections: intimacy, connections, imagination, and faces, with a series of photos boasting the visages of A-list celebrities like Naomi Campbell, Lizzo, Meghan Markle, Lewis Hamilton, and more. Within, more than 50 images paint the walls, charting the photographer's oeuvre from his early days with the medium to his editorials, celebrity-fronted photos, scrapbooks, and, even, poetry. Some images come from Niijournal, the magazine he created as a graduation project when studying at Central Saint Martins, and some come from his 2022 title, Feeling Seen: The Photographs of Campbell Addy, for which British Vogue's former Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful penned the foreword. Others span shoots featured in i-D, Dazed, New York Magazine, and more.

On a fundamental level, The Stillness of Elegance proposes a question and offers an answer. Who gets to be elegant? What does elegance even mean? The photographer explores this through expansion, pushing away a Western version of elegance and defining it on his own terms. "Having lived in between two continents growing up, it was kind of like my mold was broken. Certain things I was taught in England. Certain things were untaught to me in Ghana. But then they both reinstalled in me that humanity is again, difference is elegant," he tells L'OFFICIEL. "I try to live life, defining my own space and time, because I lived a lot of my life being defined."

The notion is a guiding principle in how he photographs others, too. Addy adds, "I respect everyone that stands in front of my lens, and I try to portray them in a manner that's just befitting to them. [That allows us to] look back and see a timelessness. To me, elegance is timelessness. Regardless of what time or period or economic status or place, you can still stand with grace and elegance."

The Stillness of Elegance also serves as invitation to witness Addy's more broad, artistic journey. Scrapbooks reveal his sources of inspiration and how he combines different elements to make an image. Pokémon trading cards in the same case tease just the surface of his love for anime. A poem titled "19" under the same glass case speaks to Addy's art, regardless of its medium, and a pivotal moment in his life. It came to him when he was outside his train station and a woman looked at him and crossed the road, he says.

On a fundamental level, he adds, "'19' was the editor's letter from the second issue of Niijournal. And at the time, I was going through a lot of mental health struggles. '19' was my trip, more like a daily journal from my flat to the station to uni and back again, just observing my space," he tells L'OFFICIEL. "It just sums up my feelings of how I felt ostracized. I felt hurt by how people viewed me just because my skin color my hairstyle. I was vehemently searching for some form of acceptance and love at the time. I didn't know what it was, but I was trying to just be secure on myself."

The 32-year-old admits that he had no idea where his journey would take him when he was just starting out in South London. But now, he's more consciously thinking about his legacy and the mark he'd like to leave. "I couldn't have foreseen what would be my career. But now, as I'm older and I think more about time, I... the thing that drives me is my sister, my siblings, the younger people I get to meet. He wants his legacy to transcend visual media as well, he adds.

"if you know of my work and you see me as a fashion photographer, I want that to be erased from your mind. I think it limits the work if you view it from just the fashion lens," he says, revealing the lasting impression he hopes guests leave the exhibit with. "If you're unaware of my work, I want you to leave be more curious as to what other works I have in terms of mediums. I'd like you to feel happy, excited, curious. I want everyone to have an opinion. A neutral opinion is the worst in art."

The Stillness of Elegance is on view at SCAD Fash Museum of Fashion + Film through—alongside Jeanne Lanvin, which explores the couturier’s rich archive, on view until August 31—on view through. More details, including on tickets and how to visit, are available on the museum's website.

Disclaimer: SCAD paid for L'OFFICIEL's travel and accommodations to attend.