The It factor: Niquita Bento

The Cape Town-based creative and globetrotter has everything it takes to make it in the realm of cool.

- Rusty Beukes

NO STRANGER TO GQ, NIQUITA BENTO is the fashion photographer responsible for our Kwesta and Bonang covers in 2018. She also shot Jeremy Scott’s supermodel squad at the HMoschino show in New York City, and received a Haig Club Clubman Disruptor Award for being a rising female photographer in a male-dominated industry. ‘First of all, it means that women no longer feel overpowered and intimidated by male dominance,’ she says of the award’s significance. ‘and secondly, it shows that the industry is shifting considerably. When I think about who I looked up to when I first picked up a camera, the likes of Peter Lindberg, Patrick Demarchelier – I thought nothing of the fact that not one woman made my list. What makes me proud is that my list is now full of young women and I too have the opportunity to potentially make a young, aspiring female (or male) photographer’s list one day, even if it isn’t in my lifetime.’