Photo Exhibit Recreates Iconic Film Scenes with Black Models

"Thelma and Louise"

Hollywood is known for it's rampant white-washing, but what would our favorite films look like if all the characters were recast with Black women?

Senegalese and French-American photographers, Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempé, chose to answer that question which their photo series for hotel group Onomo International.

The photos feature a host of black models posed as classic film characters with the hotels as the backdrop.

"Breakfast at Onomo's"

The collaboration between the photographers and the hotel group is called ONOMOllywood and features 20 images in total. About the images, photograph Omar Victor Dioup said:

ONOMOllywood is a celebration of cinema, as an artistic discipline and of the magic of a great movie. For Antoine Tempé (the co-author of the series who created 10 out of the 20 images) and myself, what makes a great movie is the fact that the strength of its characters, plot and scenes transcends all geographic, temporal and racial barriers. A great movie is more than a series of sequences, it becomes a moment that is lived across the globe by people who have very little in common, but who relate to extraordinary stories that allow them to dream.

The example I always give is the magic of a James Bond movie; back when I was a kid, I didn’t care whether Roger Moore was white or black, or whether I was a British citizen… to me, he was a hero I could impersonate. After watching A View To A Kill, I firmly believed my pajamas were a tuxedo and that my mom’s kitchen was actually some concrete jungle where I would chase after criminals… That’s what cinema has brought to me and it still somehow does, to my adult life. A great movie is a dream.