The power of colour
The fashion photographer and visual artist, Lea Colombo, on intuition, homecoming and tuning into new energy through intense colour.
Lea Colombo (she/her) has found her rhythm. Best known for her saturated, colour-drenched fashion imagery, the self-taught photographer, director and visual artist has been on an impressive career trajectory since moving to Paris after high-school, a run of personal projects and big-name commissions from the like of Vogue and i-D taking her across the globe and back again on a constant cycle. Racking up the air miles at a remarkable pace, Lea’s nomadic lifestyle came to an abrupt halt during lockdown, and, hunkered down in London, thoughts turned to priorities and a return to her home city of Cape Town. ‘London just didn’t resonate with me anymore, so I decided last year just to take time out and allow myself the space to come to Cape Town, it’s been a very creative place for me, and it’s really held that energy.’
Now working between image making and sculpture, speaking from her newly acquired studio space, we come back time and again to intuition. ‘I’ve always trusted my instinct on these things but over the last two years you see that people have had this wake-up call, asking themselves what aligns with their needs and what makes them happy.’ This ability to tap into something deeper, higher, runs throughout her body of work. Whether her celebrated series of distorted, palette rich self-portraits ‘Colours of my body,’ or the incredible floral photograms she created for a capsule COS collection, Lea’s output is designed to connect to our primal relationship with colour and its ability to shift our mood and that of those around us. ‘Colour for me is kind of the living language of light. Everything we look at is colour.’
‘COLOUR FOR ME IS KIND OF THE LIVING LANGUAGE OF LIGHT. EVERYTHING WE LOOK AT IS COLOUR.’
ON BEGINNINGS
‘I didn’t take the traditional art school route; life has been my study in a sense. I didn’t enjoy school but I had an amazing art teacher who opened up photography and I’d always had an interest in fashion so it was very clear to me what I wanted, and needed, to do. After high school I went on a solo trip to Paris and I just didn’t leave. I was doing little jobs here and there but saw a gap with backstage photography. I started shooting for Dazed & Confused which meant I’d spend the whole month travelling for fashion weeks. That to me was the biggest school, I’d end up in scenarios backstage, terrible lighting, two minutes to capture amazing images, so you have to be really creative. It was a challenge and a push, it was about making things work with few resources, you don’t always need all the equipment and for everything to be perfect to create a powerful image and that’s exciting.’
ON REMAINING OPEN
‘I’ve always had a very playful sense. I would never limit myself to one way of seeing or thinking with anything in life. I would always push myself, try different things, add new layers. Throughout my career I’ve done it the “wrong way,” I didn’t go to photography school, I didn’t do it the normal things students do. I just loved trying things. I always ask myself - what can I bring into my practice that can further the vision, create new energy?’
ON DARKROOM CREATIVITY
‘The work in the darkroom is a very specific visual identity where I work with light, colour, shape and form to create photograms and that’s what I used for this specific collection for COS which is really exciting. I love that element of being in the dark and just shaping and creating all these beautiful visuals. But I do also shoot digital, for me it’s important to play and have fun.’
ON COLOUR
‘I gravitate towards colour, it holds such a strong and powerful healing energy in lots of different ways and for lots of different reasons. It’s fun to be open to that and see how you’re naturally drawn to certain colours and what that might mean intuitively or in the body. These are all things that we’re seeing and feeling, consciously and subconsciously, but perhaps we’re not always listening to it. I’m really interested in its relationship to energy, how we’re all made up of energy centres and chakras and how they’re all based on colours.’
I think if people were to embrace colour they’d understand how it can raise their vibrations, their frequency. When I’m head-to-toe in colour people gravitate towards me, people will actually approach you and say, “I love what you’re wearing.” It’d be interesting to study why people have that reaction.’
ON THE COS COLLECTION
‘COS came to me and were really interested in all my floral prints and colours, so our conversation started there. I curated a few specific designs and put together a selection that would be applied to both men’s and women’s which I thought was amazing. COS is usually quite minimal so I was really excited by the direction we were taking and so were the team. It’s coming back to what we were talking about around colour and people’s reactions, it was this immediate ‘wow’.’
ON WEARING BRIGHTS
‘With the collection and the colour palette, it’s a whole exchange of energy. It can amplify, excite. You’re going to stand out and there’s power in that, I’m excited to see and hear how people react and I’m excited to wear it myself. I hope that people walk into the store and see it and it’ll be this beautiful tipping point. Like that moment when you wake up and decide to get out of the other side of the bed, drink your coffee from a different cup, maybe when people walk into the store, they’ll challenge themselves to try something new.’
ON CAPE TOWN
‘It’s about the land. We’re below Table Mountain and then there’s Lion’s Head so there’s all this beautiful landscape, and I think that’s why rock and stone have now started to enter my practice which is really exciting. The quality of light, the ability to just go and jump straight into the ocean. We’re all so ingrained in this 9-5 life, in Cape Town we're surrounded by constant reminders that there are these other elements that are essential to our happiness and wellbeing.’
ON FINDING SCULPTURE
‘I’ve always loved stone and gemstones. The Red Jasper stone I’ve been working with is solid, harder than steel. It’s been very physical work but it’s amazing because you have to be so present and so focused because of the machines and materials you’re using. I try not to have any expectations with my sculpture, just to listen and trust, to see where it goes with no restrictions.’
ON SELF AS SUBJECT
‘I started photographing myself during the lockdown, suddenly we had all this time to be creative, to try new things because none of us had anywhere we needed to be. So I started photographing myself and playing with light and colour. I couldn’t go to the darkroom so I had to create something powerful and beautiful with what I had around me at home. I photographed myself every day and that’s when this whole body of work, Colours of my Body, began to evolve.
If you had asked me before if I would ever photograph myself I would have said absolutely no way, but it needed to happen. It was part of a process around acceptance and love as well as all these deeper questions around the masculine and the feminine, diving into that polarity that we have within ourselves. I don’t see me, I see the body and shape and form. It was a really beautiful exercise.’
ON GOOD ADVICE
‘The best advice I’ve received is to trust in oneself and the journey, to trust that you are where you are meant to be in any one given moment in time. To understand that everyone is on their own path and there’s no right or wrong and no point in comparing yourself to others.’
‘WITH THE COLLECTION, THE COLOUR PALETTE, IT’S A WHOLE EXCHANGE OF ENERGY. YOU’RE GOING TO STAND OUT AND THERE’S POWER IN THAT.’
QUICK FIRE Q&A
COS
What was the last book you read?
LC
The Way of the White Clouds by Anagarika Govinda, it’s really beautiful, set in Tibet
COS
If you could catch a flight to anywhere tomorrow, where would you go?
LC
Kenya or Ethiopia, they’ve been on my mind.
COS
Last great film you saw?
LC
C’mon C’mon by Mike Mills.
COS
What’s your most treasured possession?
LC
I carry this blue lapis lazuli stone everywhere with me.
COS
How would your friends describe you?
LC
Colourful! Vibrant. They all call me Colombo Colours.
