Starting out as an haute couture model, French photographer Sarah Moon quickly realised that her true place was on the other side of the camera as a photographer. Moon’s work shapes a visual world that is instantly recognisable as her own – as in some stories, characters move through time that’s elevated above the ordinary for us. The sense of being part of the plot is further enhanced by the literary and cinematic references in her work.
Moon’s fashion photographs are refreshing for anyone used to seeing glossy magazine covers with perfectly framed, edited and posed models – depicting something quite the opposite – her photographs are captivating, mysterious, unfamiliar and hazy fairy tales where form, tone and beauty are blended with a subtle improvisational and almost delicate intensity. They fluctuate between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imaginary, evoking ghostly, dreamlike versions of reality. The mysterious and random subjects allow the viewer to see the world in a new and extraordinary light – these are photographs where the strange and the unusual confront ordinary reality.
