CAPE TOWN ISSUE 386 Jan 2013

EuroConnection South Africa Cape Town photo production

Abbey Lee takes time out from the dust and dystopia of the Mad Max shoot to play dress-up for Bazaar and Portmans in the Namibian desert. She stars as one of five wives in the long-awaited dystopian action film Mad Max: Fury Road, as part of what reads like the best-looking cast in film history: fellow model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, A Single Man’s Nicholas Hoult and Charlize Theron, who have been filming on location in Swakopmund, Namibia.

There’s no denying the desert scenery is as breathtaking as the genetically blessed actors but, as photographer Simon Upton, who travelled out there to shoot Kershaw for the latest Portmans campaign, discovered, it’s not the easiest place to shoot.

“We had to truck in all the equipment from Cape Town, which was 1700 kilometres away, and then build a studio in an old building in the desert,” he says. “There was power, but not much else.” After the crew spent a day or two acquainting themselves with the foreign light, Kershaw arrived and Upton and the team had just one day to shoot the model in six looks. Story written by Claire Maclean.

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