Born Free: Ilvy Njiokiktjien’s decade-long multimedia project documenting post-apartheid South Africa

Shooting a long-term project is one of the most satisfying and rewarding things you can do as a photographer. It allows you to explore a subject in depth and create a range of content on a unified theme that can be presented as a profile-raising book, exhibition or multimedia experience.

This kind of project requires patience, dedication and resilience – plus of course a subject that you're passionate about, with plenty of angles to explore. That's exactly what Dutch news and documentary photographer Ilvy Njiokiktjien found when she decided to tackle a project about South Africa.

Ilvy first became fascinated by the country when she went there as a student. In 2007, she moved to Johannesburg to work as an intern for national newspaper The Star. She began working on her first South African stories that same year, and has since developed a series of projects based in the country. They have all focused on the lives of people born after the end of apartheid in 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected President – young people dubbed the 'born free' generation. "They were to be the face of a new, free, and successful South Africa," Ilvy explains.

To mark the 25th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's election, Ilvy has collected the best of her South Africa work for a retrospective book and exhibition called Born Free: Mandela's Generation of Hope. It's a combination of documentary footage showing her subjects going about their daily lives and 'talking head' interviews. Ilvy shot the recent work, both still images and video, on her Canon EOS 5D Mark IV.

Adding video to her offering

While shooting video was initially a challenge, Ilvy says it has helped her reach a wider audience. "For the past year and a half, on the Born Free project, I've done all the video myself, shooting about 50 hours of footage. I've sent it to publications for use on their websites, but I also showed it to one of Holland's main broadcasters." Ilvy was subsequently involved in editing the footage into an hour-long documentary, which was shown on Dutch television.

Most of Ilvy's recent video work was captured using the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. For interviews, Ilvy placed the camera on a tripod. Everything else was shot with the camera handheld, apart from some images from a moving car, for which she used a gimbal to keep the camera as steady as possible. Ilvy used an external microphone for sound recording and a wireless lavalier lapel microphone for recording audio at a distance.

"I still prefer photography; it's more difficult, and more of a challenge for me to tell a story in a few pictures," Ilvy says. "You need quite a different eye. But videography also showed me a lot of things. I've done a lot of long interviews, for about an hour and a half, with all the people who I've followed. That was such a great experience, because you get to really know someone.

"Talking to people for a long time helps you to gain their trust, so the videos helped my pictures because people were more relaxed with me after they had spoken to me in front of the camera."

Learning process

The Born Free project has appeared in the Washington Post and many major newspapers in Europe, and has been published online by National Geographic. The exhibition has been shown in Ilvy's native Netherlands and will travel to countries including Malaysia, India and Italy. It will also be projected at film festivals in those three countries. She says the widespread publication of her work is "a dream come true".

"When I was pitching this project, five or six years ago, nobody was interested," she says. "It made me feel I was failing, because I thought it was so important. Now, everyone wants to publish it and I've realised I was just pitching too soon. You just have to keep going and trust in yourself."

Ilvy has also learned that projects like this are hard to do by yourself. Joining the VII Photo Agency has put her in a stronger position, she says. "I'm so happy I'm now part of VII because I'm pretty sure my next project will be a group project," she says. "Freelancing can be quite lonely. Not only can a group project have a bigger impact, but working with other people makes it more fun and fulfilling."

Ilvy adds that she hasn't necessarily finished exploring South Africa. "In the interviews I've done, I've asked all of the young people about how they think the country will look in another 25 years. I'd like to keep following them, or go back to them. South Africa is just coming out of apartheid and the story has only just begun. In many ways, I don't think I can let the story go yet."