Faces that launched a thousand ad campaigns
YOU can call Xavier Dewarimez and Simone de Kock anonymously famous: their names might not ring a bell but their likenesses sure do.
As models working in Cape Town with the world’s top stock photographer, Yuri Arcurs, Dewarimez and De Kock have had their faces plastered on billboards and used by businesses around the world.
“I’ve had a couple of people say, ‘You’re that girl!’ ” says De Kock, 25, who is a full-time model and brand ambassador for Nutri Women.
She laughs as she relates how a friend once recognised her on a billboard in Germany portraying someone with stomach cramps and irritable bowels.
“I never ever get used to it. Every time [I get recognised], it feels like the first time.”
Dewarimez, too, often receives photos from excited friends who recognise him in stock photos around the world.
A Frenchman who teaches in Cape Town, Dewarimez, 39, especially gets a kick out of playing different characters in his alternative career.
“Sometimes I’m a CEO. Other times I’m a dad, or I’ll be running, closing a business deal, driving a fancy car . . . It’s very good fun.”
Dewarimez and De Kock have worked with Arcurs for years, building up libraries thousands of images strong with the Danish photographer.
For four years, Arcurs has run his multimillion-rand business out of Cape Town, “a phenomenal multicultural hub where you can literally pick and choose [your models]”, he says.
He pulls up a stock photo of a business meeting on his website, People Images, where his work sells at the rate of an image a minute.
“It’s a fully South African group [of models], but it doesn’t look South African. Everyone is natively from here but look how ethnically diverse they are. It’s awesome. You can’t get that anywhere else in the world.”
For a professional stock photographer, photos with models of a single race are out of the question. “So we just diversify it and create an ideal world where everybody gets along,” Arcurs says.
He estimates that half of his models are South African, some of whom he has single-handedly turned into “semi-superstars”, like De Kock and Dewarimez.
Such models can become breadwinners for Arcurs, who does between 1 200 and 1 500 meticulously planned shoots a year with 30 photographers around the globe.
People Images pushes out anything between 6 000 and 10 000 images a year, all of which have been rigorously processed and edited by at least eight different people.
Arcurs is a photographer but he’s also shown himself to be a canny businessman. He got into stock photography only eight years ago, but swiftly made a name for himself by plunging into “microstock”, the oncerevolutionary sector where stock images are sold cheaply.
Whereas it was once considered “stupid” and “unprofessional”, microstock is now the norm — and Arcurs is top dog.
Although he declines to reveal how much he earns, Arcurs will say that he was able to buy a new building worth R25-million after three years of business in Cape Town from profits alone. At the peak of his business, four years ago, he sold an image every 15 seconds.
The industry is so competitive now that trying to break in alone is near impossible, says Arcurs. “You need 2 000 to 3 000 images online to start making a living. Who’s going to do that work for you? That’s two years of full-time work.
“Photography is the world’s biggest hobby as well as a professional industry.
“Which means anything you do has to be so good that an amateur can never aspire to do it,” he says.
I’ve had a couple of people say, ‘You’re that girl!’