Our Folklore: Photographer Dapper Lou Is Refining the Art of Cultural Storytelling

 

From snapping photos of fashion editors during Paris Fashion Week to capturing the essence and liveliness of communities in Kenya, Lougè Delcy, better known as Dapper Lou, knows how to navigate a successful career pivot. As a self-taught photographer, Delcy grew his Dapper Lou persona through his personal style and street style blog by following the traditional European fashion week circuit.

Eventually, the flood of street style photographers all capturing the same subjects weakened its appeal and prompted him to shift his sights to travel and capturing the intimate parts of human life. After Delcy left the fashion week world, he began organizing projects to photograph the untouched beauty blossoming throughout Africa. 

Namibia, South Africa, and Morocco have all welcomed Delcy’s traveling camera with their colorful people and cultures. Besides the continent of Africa, he has also photographed in countries such as Cuba, Guatemala, and Mexico. No matter where he takes his camera, the stories of his subjects never fail to emerge from the photos themselves.

Kenya, in particular, has inspired Delcy. After spending hours upon hours researching Kenyan culture, history, and language, he took to the streets to find inspiration in all of the natural beauty and wonder. A five day trip to Kenya to work on a project with a local organization, Giants of Africa, turned into a two-week vacation that opened Delcy's eyes to the powerful allure of raw cultural stories.

In Kenya, Delcy shot his series “Maasai”. The Maasai are an aboriginal tribe in East Africa that have become significantly compromised by encroaching outside civilization. Their culture, within their fence adorned by acacia thorns, has withstood the test of time. Delcy’s photographic series maintains a darker aesthetic, full of dark blues and brooding blacks, except for the cultural clothes that pop out of every image.

Vibrant yellows and oranges adorning the traditional neck pieces and flowing apparel appear blinding against the darkly colored background. Among the darkness, however, are the silhouettes of the Maasai people. Neither the blinding brightness nor the barely-there darkness are easily legible. Thus, Delcy has produced a set of images that promote awareness of the existence and beauty of the Maasai people without offering their lifestyles up for sale.

One of our personal favorite projects captured by Delcy is titled “Boys Who Swim”. For this series, Delcy traveled to the city of Swakopmund, Namibia. Somehow, the photos seem to be taken from within the water as young boys splash and frolic among the ocean shores. Their skin glistens like black marble, sharply contrasting the youthful and carefree scenes. No matter the Delcy project, pure and raw scenes are transformed by the postproduction recolorations that culminate the history underlying the scene.      

Along with his personal travel photography adventures, Delcy runs a creative agency and collective known as Dapper Studios in New York City. The studio is often booked out as a photography space, but it is always full of any and all kinds of artists: poets, filmmakers, stylists, and more. The vision of Dapper Lou and the space of Dapper Studios combines to form a limitless wealth of inspiration. 

The intimate photos that Delcy produces are the products of love and appreciation for the culture that is being captured. While initially hesitant, he has started selling prints through the Dapper Lou website. Each print offers a look into a world that is vastly unknown by outsiders. 

Listen to episode seven of The Folklore's podcast 'Our Folklore' featuring an interview with Dapper Lou. Available now on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play, and Stitcher. Find excerpts from the interview below.

Born and bred like a real new Yorker. I guess you can say the main ‘Dapper’ came from around the time 2008 or 2009. This is pre-instagram. I had a menswear blog, I called it ‘Dapper Lou’. It was kind of my modern take on that term ‘Dapper Dan’, just that idea. It turned out without realizing I turned myself into a personality in terms of a brand.

Everything about me is all self-taught. But I think there’s a few different reasons I picked up the camera. One, at the time I was doing a lot of unpaid styling gigs. I was just trying to get my foot wet and figure out what it is that I like doing. I think when you’re young you’re like, ‘Oh okay I’m stylish, so I’m going to be a stylist,’. That was my thought process. When I got into styling, I realized that photographers did not like sending you images. Which is still the same way now – that has not changed. I think out of frustration, I was like, ‘I’m gonna style my own shoots and do my own images’.

I did Paris fashion week one year. When I went there, I think that for me that was like the stamp of approval. Because it took me from just New York blog to international, and I didn’t realize how much of an impact that would make. I remember this editor from Paper magazine sneaking me into a show, and all of these editors were sneaking me into shows. It was such a fun moment because I was this curious person. I didn’t know what I was doing honestly, but I’m just with this camera and I’m documenting. I remember specifically shooting outside of this John Daliana show, it was pouring rain, and I was with all of these other street photographers. This editor was like, ‘Come with me to this show,’. We ended up going to a Kensa show. 

I think in fashion, it has that pretentiousness where people may know who you are but they won’t acknowledge you. So the fact that she [a well-known fashion editor] took a moment to notice me, it was like ‘wow!’, I didn’t even notice it at the time, it was just pure excitement, I was just happy to even be in the room.

I was in this weird space of what do you do? Do you go back to a regular job and keep working? Or do you pursue this [photography] career? It was a very difficult moment because this whole creative life … you know, you don’t get paid every two weeks. It’s this whole lifestyle that I wasn’t prepared for, I was used to that structure.

I was kind of done with that [high end fashion scene]. That’s when I got into travel photography. That’s when I started traveling to different places and exploring. The more I started traveling the less it became about me going somewhere to stunt, and me actually going somewhere to document people and culture. Once I got into that, I just genuinely fell in love.

I guess each trip is different and my approach for it is different. I do a lot of research before going to these places. I check out what the landscape is like, what the people are like. I’m just trying to get as much information as I can. I’ll watch a whole bunch of videos and I try to research as much as I can about the people and the culture. Sometimes you get there and it’s completely different, and sometimes it’s spot-on.

I feel like my real, real, real African experience was Kenya because I was really in it. I really cherish it because Kenya changed my whole everything. It changed my whole approach to photography. It changed everything for me.

I think color really plays back to my heritage. I’m Hattian, so it plays back to that Caribbean aspect. The way that plays into my work is that I shoot a lot of people of color, and people of color look amazing in color. Amplifying that through my whole way of documenting and editing, [in order to] really to show the beauty of people of color in color. Sometimes, for places in the world, have a narrative you can see. For me, color shows you the bright side. The world is naturally in color, so I’m gravitating towards something that’s already there and just amplifying it as much as I can through saturation and contrast.

That’s what art is. There’s a reason I’m making it and there’s also people’s opinion. When I went to Namibia, I went to the beach and I saw kids having fun, like the time of their life in the water. I’m just documenting that experience, and I feel like that experience is documenting joy, people, amplifying colors, documenting experiences as I explore and see a life. That’s my process of doing stuff, so I guess if that falls into X genre then that’s how it can be perceived. But I’m just going through life documenting.

That’s what art is. There’s a reason I’m making it and there’s also people’s opinion. When I went to Namibia, I went to the beach and I saw kids having fun, like the time of their life in the water. I’m just documenting that experience, and I feel like that experience is documenting joy, people, amplifying colors, documenting experiences as I explore and see a life. That’s my process of doing stuff, so I guess if that falls into X genre then that’s how it can be perceived. But I’m just going through life documenting.

Words by Paige Downie