The idea came to Hamilton when he was asked to initiate a project at Middlesex University. “It could be about anything you wanted, and I remembered there were these rumours going around about these areas in north Uganda that were known for having really tall and elegant women living there,” he says. Hamilton quizzed friends with relatives in the area and they told him about the Acholi people, an ethnic group living in north Uganda and South Sudan.

Hamilton contacted designers to get clothes for the project, eventually getting Lawlor to agree, then headed to Uganda on his own for 10 days, going from village to village and photographing more than 50 people before settling on his main model. All the people he met had some idea of what he was doing, as even the most remote villages have access to at least one small restaurant with Sky TV, and many of the girls he photographed jokingly emulated Naomi Campbell or Alex Wek. Even so, they didn’t always get the clothes. “They didn’t really understand them, especially the shoes,” he laughs. “The women were looking at the high heels and wondering why people would wear them.”

Hamilton’s images won the Association of Photographers Student Award this year, but initially his tutors were less positive, questioning his motives and even whether the work was racist. “It’s easy for many to read a poor woman modelling expensive clothes; I read a tall, elegant and beautiful girl looking amazing in Derek Lawlor’s collection,” he says. “Layola, my model, was actually a university graduate, who was born in the village then moved to Kampala to study. That fact alone can completely change the way the images are read.

“To me, Africa is not all one big country, I’m fully aware that there are different countries in the continent,” he adds. “My main aims were to show that beauty can be found almost everywhere and to photograph something we don’t often see in our fashion magazines. I wanted to explore both a different culture and our own perceptions.”

Visit www.squizhamilton.com.

Image © Squiz Hamilton.

Image © Squiz Hamilton.

Image © Squiz Hamilton.