Some people expect to be surprised by their own image in photos, some need to look exactly as the model image they compose and see in a mirror (this category tends to self-characterize as non-photogenic).
This is a little bit of a challenge when the photographer and model only meet right before the photo session, without the luxury of a previous chat and the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit. If there are extra rigorous requirements (i.e. ‘middle gray backdrop, hands crossed casually over chest, discrete smile, no teeth’), the frail connection between the photographer and the unsuspecting subject can become even more delicate.
Connie was only briefly in town, attending a conference, and I had only an hour to snag out of her busy schedule and lead her in a semi-haste to some urban backgrounds in mid-Berlin, neutral enough to accompany her interview in the science magazine commissioning these photos.
The autumn, excellent until a day before, had turned that morning into what I call ‘drowned-rat weather’, wet, gray and cold.
My model however, of a naturally sunny disposition, unfazed by the grim autumn, emerged from her hotel all smiling and bright with colours and patterns. She complied with all my directions with receptivity and poise, and her only remark was that keeping a straight serious face did not really represent her.
"Decolonising the mind, the Politics of Language in African Literature", a treasured book by the renowned writer, professor and theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, was one of our 'props'.
My blue umbrella was the other.
She told me some things about her activity as a researcher and educator, policy and science advocate and facilitator, both in her native Uganda and within the Africa Science Leadership Programme, but only when I read the spotlight material in the science magazine did I have the chance to find out more about this luminous and self-assured model I had on a damp autumn morning in Berlin, Connie Nshemereirwe.
Read more about her academic career and her journey from civil engineer to co-presiding the Global Young Academy in the online issue of the U-Today Science & Technology Magazine, pages 26-29.