Dior Is Betting on This Young Photographer to Cease You in Your Tracks

“How do you feel?” The query—posed repeatedly by the narrator of Joel Quayson’s brief movie How Do You Feel?—echoes as Quayson, a pupil on the Hague’s Royal Academy of Art, attire and undresses in entrance of the digicam. He pulls a easy white shirt over his head, its open collar revealing a silver cross. How do you’re feeling? He tugs on a fuzzy pink balaclava—a body for unhappy eyes bedazzled with fuchsia glitter and shimmering crystals. How do you’re feeling? He removes the shirt. He wipes away the make-up. How do you’re feeling?

“Compact. Raw. Real. It questions you. You question him. The concept is simple but pure,” says Peter Philips, inventive director for Dior Makeup. He and fellow jurors—together with companion establishment Luma Arles’s founder Maja Hoffmann and artists from across the globe—awarded Quayson the 2025 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents on the annual Rencontres d’Arles photograph pageant. “There’s such a heaviness behind it: He wants his parents to see who he is, but he can’t show them,” provides photographer and jury chair Yuriko Takagi. “After I watched it, I couldn’t stop thinking of it. You wonder how he feels—and by the end, you return to questioning how you feel. How do I feel?”

On the eve of his award ceremony in July, Quayson shared simply that with CULTURED’s magnificence editor.

Describe the texture of your work in three phrases.

Vulnerability. Acceptance. Discovery.

What attracts your focus to the idea of a number of selves?

It’s one thing that I’ve struggled with, the totally different sides of me. The video exhibits one a part of me: how I’m seen by individuals who know my orientation, [how] I wish to exit and be round my mates. Dressing up. Just being open and expressive. And the opposite half is about my tradition, my faith, and my household—how they see me.

Both sides are very totally different, however it’s nonetheless one individual. I’m preparing for a celebration and placing on issues and having enjoyable with it. After the social gathering, after I return dwelling, I’ve to take every little thing off, in order that they received’t see. Otherwise, they’d query why I gown like this. They would ask, “Are you this? Or are you this?” This battle has gone on and on and on for therefore lengthy.

Has your loved ones seen your work?

No, I’ve advised them about it, that my work was chosen and that I received. They needed to see it, and I wish to present it to them, however I don’t know the best way to. I don’t know the way they may react to it. They don’t know I’m queer.

What are your important components when taking pictures images or a movie?

I love individuals. I really like to take a look at individuals on the road, in school, or anywhere—see how they gown and the way they behave. Where else do you flip for inspiration? Movies, TV, undoubtedly music. Charli XCX actually evokes me. For photographers: Peter Lindbergh, Tyler Mitchell, Ryan McGinley, Petra Collins.

Petra’s actually the one, together with Peter Lindbergh, who made me wish to begin doing images. Her work is so weak and so gentle and exquisite. Whenever I see her work, I am going, How does she do that? I verify on YouTube to see behind the scenes however nonetheless can’t determine it out. With make-up, I’m impressed by the individuals round me: drag queens, ballroom artists, photographers. On social media, [it’s] the individuals doing extraordinary issues with make-up, and Euphoria. It was so easy, however so stunning.