Brendan Louw | Lentille NU

My grandfather was into photography, and I remember playing with his Minolta cameras and looking through his photography books. At the age of 16 I picked up my first camera, a Canon PowerShot A series . At the time I attended an art school after where all my pears sported either DLSR or Bridge cameras. My parents told me that they would get me a DSLR, if I got an A.

I managed to pull through with an A, pushing that little camera to it’s absolute maximums. I learn a lot from this experience. At the school I studied what art meant to me through photography and outside of my frame. I fell in love with textures, shadows and the use of light. However, as a young teenager who still struggled with ADHD and dyslexia, I left the art school.

I spent the next couple years shooting all kinds of content, from weddings, matric dances, wild life, you know, the stuff you start with. My twin brother started to study fashion which I too enjoyed to capture. Amongst him and his designer friends, I established myself as their go-to photographer. I never stopped playing around with photos back then, my Nikon D3100 travelled with me everywhere. Unfortunately all my gear got stolen in Brussels while traveling with my brothers.

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When my almost 7 year stint in hospitality came towards an end, my creative energy started to burn again. I started to play around with Virtual Reality goggles that I had won in a competition. Later that month I conceptualized the idea of a production house that specializes in Virtual Reality and immersive content. I’ve been working in this field professionally ever since, still my creative needs never stop bugging.

At the high of the Covid pandemic, 2020, I had hit a low. VR productions were in low demand, but education in the space was high. Mostly, I’d never given up on VR, and probably won’t for the next decade or so. However, I longed to capture photos again, away from commercial input, something artistic, of my own.

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This is when Lentille NU was born. A lifetime friend of mine had seen my potential Fine Art Nude shoot plan that I had been working on. She then offered to model for me. At first I decline, being too shy to immerse myself in such a shoot. On the other hand, I really needed a creative outlet at this point, so I decided to take her up on her offer. We both were surprisingly amazed by the end results. Another friend of my twin ended up seeing the final photos and wanted to model for me too.

I soon realised that Lentille NU was more than just a creative release for myself. Many of my models, shy at first, found new love for their bodies. They gained new appreciation for their scars, stretch marks and awkward spots.

It’s in the moments that my models see themselves in new light, when my clients see a year long project go live, when VR educates and changes the way we see things, it’s in these moments that I find my purpose to create.