The Morning Before The Flight — Adriana by Masonwabe Mesatywa

The Morning Before The Flight is a fine art photography editorial by South African photographer Masonwabe Mesatywa, featuring model and stylist Adriana.

Built around vulnerability, intimacy and departure, the series explores a final emotional moment before separation.

The way you look at me makes me feel so alive. It takes away every scar and every insecurity the undeserving had created in me.

I am vulnerable, sexual and free when I’m around you; the divine feminine. So much that I even forgot what my reality was like before you.

I no longer exist without you, but it’s about that time I have to go home. The purest emotion I have experienced was nearing the end.

So for what it’s worth, let me give you what’s left of me.

— Masonwabe Mesatywa

Adriana

Adriana was born in South Africa and, at the time of the original feature, was studying International Business Management in Miami, Florida.

She uses modeling as a form of artistic expression, drawing on personal experience and carefully curated photographic projects as a way of processing her past.

Masonwabe Mesatywa

Masonwabe Mesatywa was born in Umthatha in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. His interest in photography developed through travel and the desire to preserve memories and moments that might otherwise disappear.

Black-and-white film photographs around his childhood home were an early visual influence and helped shape his fascination with photographic images.

For Mesatywa, photography became a form of expression — a way to frame emotions and thoughts that are difficult to communicate through words alone.

Photography
Masonwabe Mesatywa · @mason_mesatywa

Model & Styling
Adriana · @_hadeez_

Makeup Artist
Koketso Gomolemo

Photography Made to Be Seen

LIONS Art Magazine is an independent international publication dedicated to contemporary fine art photography.
The magazine presents carefully selected photographic editorials, personal visual projects and collaborations
between photographers, models and creative teams from around the world.

Alongside the regular magazine editions, LIONS also publishes dedicated artist books and special editions,
giving individual photographers the space to present a larger and more personal body of work.

Explore more women in fine art photography in the LIONS Art Magazine editorial archive.

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