Trevor Stuurman was born in Kimberly in the Northern Cape of South Africa. He is an award-winning multimedia visual artist who finds beauty in that which reminds him of home. Having first come into the artist scene eleven years ago as a winner of The Elle Style Reporter, he has cemented himself as a force to be reckoned with.
Stuurman highlights street style in South Africa through his photography. This includes fashion of any kind. He believes he is rewriting history through the lens in the way he captures images and the way he presents them to be viewed by consumers of his work. Provided that his pictures are sometimes taken on the street, he has challenged the possibilities of what can be produced in the streets of South Africa by creating a comfortable enough environment for his subjects to pose for him.
Stuurman Style Diary is a blog where Stuurman posts the pictures that he takes and these are pictures that inspire his fashion sense. These are pictures that are colourful and feature different people in their different style elements and these all have a common essence to them: they are enticing. The subjects have different backgrounds, are inspired by different things in their style the subjects featured on the page are people who have a flair for style. They possess the type of fashion sense that turns heads and gets people clapping their hands at the amount of detail these subjects put into how they look.
Stuurman’s style is defined by the African print, he particularly enjoys designing suits in this style. On the global stage, he believes this sets him apart but it also ensures that he always carries a piece of home with him. The concept of home is one that is important to Stuurman to the extent that it inspired his first solo exhibition which took place in Johannesburg mid-2022. Titled, “A Place Called Home” it was set in a home in the west of Johannesburg, it featured themes such as nostalgia, community and storytelling. The theme of storytelling is one that speaks to the exhibition itself as well as the entirety of work that Stuurman has done. To see it being a driving force in this exhibition about home relates everything to each other perfectly.
Having worked with global humanitarian foundations, Stuurman’s work has been deemed a cultural force. Stuurman was tasked with photographing the former United States President Barack Obama’s visit to his ancestral home land, Kenya, in association with the Auma Obama Foundation. He has worked with Beyonce twice, first in 2018 as one of the photographers for the singer’s Global Citizen performance, and secondly as part of the pro-black film Black is King. He wants his work to be remembered as having captured inclusive representations of beauty, culture and fashion expression.
