Photographer: Chance Nkosi Gomez
Design: Chance Nkosi Gomez
Publisher: Self-Published
Year: November 2017
Binding: Softcover
Pages: 62 / Proline Pearl Photographic Paper
Size: 8x10 in, 21x26 cm.
Language: English
Edition: Series I

Nkosi Gomez’s self-published photographic book Follow me i’ll be right behind you. reads less like a conventional photo collection and more like a visual stream of paradoxes—images that feel staged yet inexplicable, humorous yet slightly unsettling, and always intentionally unresolved.

Across the work, Gomez builds a language of bodily fragmentation and surreal placement. Figures are frequently bent, hidden, doubled, or partially erased by their surroundings—heads obscured by objects, torsos folded into impossible angles, limbs emerging from unexpected places. Clothing is often formal or coordinated, but it functions more like a sculptural element than fashion, emphasizing shape, color, and disorientation rather than identity. Faces are rarely the focus; anonymity becomes a tool, shifting attention to gesture and composition.

The environments—stucco walls, industrial lots, suburban corners, trees, shipping containers—are ordinary, even banal. Yet they are treated as stages for quiet absurdity. A person might merge with architecture, disappear into an object, or interact with space in ways that defy logic. The tension between the familiar setting and the illogical action creates a subtle, dry humor that runs throughout the book.

Color plays a significant role. Many images use soft pastels or carefully coordinated palettes—muted blues, dusty pinks, warm browns—punctuated by occasional saturated elements like bright yellows or oranges. This controlled color harmony contrasts with the strangeness of the scenes, making the surreal feel calm rather than chaotic.

The title itself—Follow me i’ll be right behind you.—captures the book’s core contradiction. It suggests guidance and leadership, but also impossibility and circular logic. That same contradiction appears visually: subjects seem to lead and disappear simultaneously, present and absent at once. There’s a recurring sense of movement without progress, action without clear purpose.

Rather than offering a narrative, the book resists it. Each photograph feels like the beginning of a story that never resolves. The viewer is left to sit with ambiguity, to notice patterns—repetition of poses, props, and spatial tricks—without being given a definitive meaning. This aligns with Gomez’s broader practice: an interest in perception, expectation, and the quiet humor of things not quite making sense.

Overall, the book functions as a cohesive body of work built on restraint and conceptual consistency. It’s playful but controlled, strange but grounded, inviting interpretation while deliberately withholding answers. (November, 2017)