“You watch an 18-year-old navigating bigger emotions, bigger spaces, intimate relationships”

Dalia Al-Dujaili: Why was this the right moment to publish Davide’s journals?  

Francesca Sorrenti: Now felt like the right time because I could finally approach these journals with a different state of mind, the material was simply too intimate, now I can see it as an essential part of his legacy, and this generation is ready to see him without the noise around his story. We are living in a moment when people crave the real thing, and emotional depth, especially in contrast to the digital world. Davide’s handwriting, his collages, the way he documented his friends and the city – all of it resonates more powerfully now. The journals speak directly to today’s thirst for knowledge, for something real.  

DA: You’ve established a publishing relationship with IDEA. What makes IDEA the right publisher to work with Davide’s imagery and journals?  

FS: IDEA is the right publisher because they understand the human element of youth culture, photography, and fashion in a way few others do. They immediately recognised Davide’s voice and the energy of his generation, and they treated his work with the respect and precision it deserves, not as nostalgia, but as living culture. 

DA: How does your personal relationship with your late son help to shape the pages we see? 

FS: My relationship with Davide shaped the edit simply because I knew him as a teenager, not as the cultural figure he later became after his passing. I could separate the noise from what was really his voice. When creating the book, I focused on keeping the pages exactly as he created them, honest, fast, unfiltered, without imposing my own interpretation. My role was to protect the integrity of what he wrote and saw, not to rewrite it. 

DA: What can we expect from the proceeding Volumes? 

FS: The next volume and the last of his journals continue the same approach. Davide’s pages are shown exactly as he made them. As Journal 2 progresses, you see him change. His understanding of photography becomes more technical and deliberate, and he starts stepping  deeper into the gritty side of downtown New York and the ’90s fashion world. His circle widens  skaters, models, musicians, young artists, other photographers and an important girlfriend  enters the picture, adding another layer to his personal world. You watch an 18-year-old navigating bigger emotions, bigger spaces, intimate relationships, and a growing creative ambition. Together, the volumes show how quickly he was evolving and how naturally he was finding his place in that moment. Journal Two is the evolution of Davide Sorrenti.

Davide Sorrenti Journals: Volume 1 1994-1995 is available at IDEA

“There’s a vulnerability and strength in how girls move through the world”

Distributed around the space via projector, in frames upon walls, and delicately displayed in vitrines (see, the 2018 Sisters poster), in practice this looks like Lauren Greenfield’s iconic Girl Culture series (2002) and Nigel Shafran’s Teenage Precinct Shoppers (1990); Nancy Honey’s 2001 series Girls Shopping, and Micaiah Carter’s Adeline in Barrettes from 2018. Juergen Teller’s SS07 campaign for Marc Jacobs, starring a pre-teen Dakota Fanning in specially-made catwalk looks, also appears, while Roni Horn’s This is Me, This is You (1997–2000), a collaboration with her niece Georgia, notably features towards the exhibition’s end. “I placed this series in the closing section because it speaks to two meaningful ideas,” advises the curator. “How quickly time passes during that stage of life, and that the most compelling works don’t portray girls as distant, voiceless muses, instead engaging them actively in the creation of the work.” Indeed, Horn followed her niece’s lead throughout the project, culminating in 96 close-up portraits of Georgia going about her life.

Elsewhere, Eimear Lynch’s Girls’ Night (2023), for which she travelled across her native Ireland photographing the ceremony of a night at the local disco – teenagers doing their make-up, gossiping with friends, and getting dressed up – is underpinned by the idea of creating a kind of dialogue between the images and the photographer’s own memories of growing up and enacting similar rituals. “The work comes from a place of recognition; my own experience of girlhood is definitely woven into it,” says Lynch. “I’m also inspired by the honesty and intensity of that stage of life, how everything feels heightened and meaningful. There’s a vulnerability and strength in how girls move through the world.”

In her essay Girl Code: Conceptualising the Girl of Fashion, which appears in the accompanying catalogue, Morna Laing, a professor at The New School, Parsons Paris, observes that “the concept of ‘the girl’ has elastic boundaries… one can remain a girl long after leaving girlhood; or at least that is what language would have us believe.” It’s a sentiment many of the works on show lean into, including Fumiko Imano’s ongoing twin series (which, coincidentally, appears on the catalogue’s cover enwrapped in a heart-shaped cutout). Beginning during her studies in London in the early 2000s, the Japanese photographer produces self-portraits, cutting and sticking photos together to create a twin in the same image. “I started when I tried to fit into adulthood but I couldn’t,” she explains of the concept’s genesis. “I wished I could stay as a child, because I don’t feel like I’m experiencing womanhood the same as a normal woman – I haven’t given birth [for example]. But I wasn’t necessarily considering myself as doing ‘girls’ things, I have just always been counted in a ‘girls’ category.” 

Steering the wider exhibition is the common understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to examining or participating in girlhood – it means, feels and looks like different things to different people, hence the scope of GIRLS. This is made clear in the exhibition’s finale piece, in a film wherein the director Leonardo Van Dijl gathers a collection of perspectives, interviewing ‘girls’ aged nine through to 80 about how they interpret and engage with girlhood. Lynch speaks further to this point, describing those she met while making Girls’ Night: “In different ways, they all [the teenagers] wanted to be seen,” she notes. “Some were naturally confident, others quiet or self-conscious, which reminded me how layered girlhood really is. Social media can make it feel like there’s one universal version of being a teenage girl, but there are so many nuances.”

GIRLS. On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between is on at MoMu Antwerp until 01 February, 2026

“Unconventional or surprising imagery is what excites me most – work that challenges what we think of as beautiful”

Conroy explains the importance of casting: “We’ve moved away from the impossibly aspirational imagery of the past into a more interesting and inclusive era of fashion. By casting non-professional models or people from their own communities, these images are much more striking, partly because they are out of the ordinary, but also because they challenge normative, outdated ideals of beauty in favour of something more awkward and real.” Kaine Harrys Anamalu mixes sharp Italian tailoring with a critical eye on representations of the Black body. His work feels as much about authorship and history as about fashion itself.

When asked what threads she found among the works, Conroy identifies recurring motifs: “I saw a deep and personal connection with nature (in the work of Camille Lemoine and Maya-Aska Arai), an interest in dismantling the glamour and artificiality of aspirational fashion imagery (Kaine Harrys Anamalu, Coco Wu, Rino Qiu) in favour of something that feels more like documentary photography. I picked the work that spoke to me visually first, and threads began to emerge later, with photographers working within and against the genre of fashion imagery.” Across the exhibition, these photographers dismantle the glossy veneer of traditional fashion imagery. Their work feels intimate, grounded, and deeply human, as if the camera has turned away from aspiration and toward connection. 

That connection to nature feels both visual and philosophical. Many of these photographers use the natural world not just as a location or backdrop but as collaborator, embracing weather and light as important and active elements in their storytelling. Fashion photography has long thrived on creating other-worldly fantasies in studio sets, yet here, images are shaped by the instability of daylight and the slow rhythm of the seasons. The landscape mirrors the self, as imperfect and ever changing.

Conroy is especially excited about the show’s setting. “Displaying these works outdoors on Lower Stable Street means a wider audience can encounter them – people who might never step into a gallery. I want passersby to see this work and expand their idea of what fashion imagery even is.” If the old fashion photograph sold unattainable fantasy, the new one seeks intimacy. In an age where every phone is a camera and every social platform a publishing tool, the question becomes: how can an image still move us? What can it reveal that we don’t already know?

Today’s photographers seem less interested in perfection and more in presence and in what happens between the staged and the spontaneous. Shooting on iPhones, in bedrooms, or on the unstaged street corners, they have rediscovered what it means to make images that feel alive. “I’m excited to see how the next generation redefines the parameters of the fashion image,” Conroy says. “Unconventional or surprising imagery is what excites me most – work that challenges what we think of as beautiful, or what even counts as fashion.” 

Rethinking Fashion Image is on at Lower Stable Street Lightboxes, Kings Cross, until 05 January, 2026

“It’s this whole subculture where boys meticulously colour-coordinate a tracksuit with their trainers, then top it off with a fresh trim”

The idea took root during conversations with her brother about the often- overlooked grooming rituals of Moroccan youth. “We’d talk about how crazy the hairstyles were – but no one really documents them,” she says. “It’s this whole subculture where boys meticulously colour-coordinate a tracksuit with their trainers, then top it off with a fresh trim. It’s all curated.”

As Abelque continued her research, the project deepened in complexity. Hairstyles, she realised, reflect political realities. “There’s this stereotype that these boys are just idling all day,” she says. “But they’re creating joy and purpose for themselves. A footballer debuts a new style and suddenly everyone’s talking about it, running to the barber to get the same look.”

In a country where youth employment is scarce and public recreational spaces are limited, the barbershop emerges as a vital hub. “Hair and beauty become a means of self-expression,” Abelque says. “But it’s also a social ritual – a way to find identity and belonging among young men.” Abelque shoots in the barbershops too, and the images festooning their walls provide a joyfully chaotic foil for the quieter portraits taken against a clean space. Abelque sees the barbershop as a boy’s bedroom in public, walls covered in football posters, streetwear brand logos and mirror selfies. “It’s where their interests live.”

Abelque is particularly drawn to aesthetic contradictions. “To see an Arab man walking around with a massive mohawk – that image is so layered,” she reflects. But she adds that their pride is also palpable. She was overwhelmed by how excited the boys were to have their portrait made, the images perhaps validating the care taken over their appearance, and further encouraging them to attract a healthy attention. “When I asked to take their photo, they’d light up,” she says. “They’d pull out pictures of their best fits, their favourite cuts. They’re proud of how they present themselves.”

@zeeeeeea

“What made INDEX so special was the ability to capture cultural icons not through staging or control, but through immediacy and trust”

Working with photographers like Tillmans, Teller, and Mark Borthwick before they were widely known, Halley remembers that “these photographers created a vérité-style for our photographic essays that was unique to magazines at the time. Their approach employed natural light and featured offbeat, intimate moments. I think it encouraged a new generation of photographers to value authenticity over slickness.” He believes the magazine’s photographers shaped “a legacy of visual honesty, collaborative creativity, and boundary-pushing style that reverberated across culture and continues to influence visual media today.”

One image on display, exemplary of the spirit of INDEX, shows social activist and human rights advocate Bianca Jagger, shot by Wolfgang Tillmans in 1998. The magazine’s team was struggling to find a time to shoot Jagger; finally, she called Tillmans and told him she was boarding a plane at JFK in the next 30 minutes. Tillmans grabbed a cab and ended up photographing her at the check-in counter. That image became the cover.

“For us, including it in the exhibition was non-negotiable,” says the team at Wahter Studio. “It embodies what made INDEX so special: the ability to capture cultural icons not through staging or control, but through immediacy and trust. That tension between the ordinary and the iconic is central to the magazine’s DNA, and it’s something we wanted visitors to experience firsthand.”

Wahter Studio’s team tells me that Design Week felt like the right moment to stage this retrospective “because INDEX was, at its core, about design in the broadest sense – not just graphic or editorial, but the design of culture itself. The magazine blurred boundaries between disciplines and treated interviews, photography, and layout as equal parts of a larger ecosystem. That ethos aligns perfectly with what Design Week represents: a celebration of how ideas move fluidly across mediums and industries.”

For the Wahter Studio team, bringing INDEX into this context was also about “repositioning” it: “It’s not just a piece of publishing history; it’s a design object, a curatorial project, and a cultural experiment that anticipated so much of how we create and consume today. Paris Design Week attracts a cross-disciplinary audience that understands the power of design as both form and thought. It felt essential to present INDEX here, in dialogue with a new generation of designers, artists, and cultural producers who are unknowingly working within its legacy.”

@index.magazine @wahterstudio

@theodoros_pressure

“At a time when many of us feel uprooted, turning our attention to our fellow earthly companions offers ways to deeply connect with our places”

– Gavin Van Horn

At the heart of the festival is the exhibition that gave it its name, The Tree of Life: A Love Letter to Nature, a major showcase featuring the works of 50 international artists selected through an open call with over 5,000 applications. The final selection was curated by a distinguished jury composed of experts from all global Vogue editions, Condé Nast, and leading figures in the fields of photography, environmental science, and activism. Together, these artists offer a multifaceted vision of nature – not as something separate from us, but an intrinsic part of our existence and survival.

“Art has the power to inspire meaningful change,” says Alessia Glaviano, Head of Global PhotoVogue and Festival Director. “This edition of the PhotoVogue Festival aims to foster a deeper understanding of our kinship with all living beings and spark collective action to protect our shared home.”

The exhibited works span continents and generations, forming a choral celebration of the resilience of ecosystems while also revealing their fragility. Among the featured artists: Kin Coedel, whose Children of the Plateau captures the silent dignity of Tibetan nomadic herders and their symbiosis with the yaks that sustain them; Bettina Pittaluga, with Unconditional, reflecting on the unique relationship between humans and animals; and Lucía Alonso Garrido, whose Eskawatã Kayawai portrays the self-claimed Huni Kuin, or “true people,” now experiencing a cultural revival after narrowly escaping extinction in the last century. The projects featured explore the intimate connection between the human body and nature, weaving together both spirituality and materiality.

The Latin American Panorama section explores identity, culture and environmental interdependence. It features photographers like Gleeson Paulino (Brasa), who reflects on the contradictions of his homeland, while Gabriel Gomez (You Should Have Come Yesterday) investigates the shifting landscapes of memory. “Photography can reshape the way we see ourselves and the world,” says Gomez. “Through these narratives, we can not only listen but also see – raising awareness and, hopefully, inspiring action.”

Another crucial section of the festival is The Tree of Change, a series of slideshows, videos, and contributions from organisations dedicated to environmental advocacy. Among the featured works, Metaphysics of Mixture by the Institute for Postnatural Studies explores post-natural hybridity as an act of resistance and regeneration. The project challenges colonial botanical narratives and proposes new forms of relationship between humans and non-humans, embracing coexistence and transformation.

Lastly, the section In Vogue with Nature presents a digital exhibition that highlights iconic global Vogue covers celebrating the relationship between fashion and nature. Spanning decades, the covers emphasise sustainability, creativity, and the harmony between art and the environment.

Beyond the exhibitions, the PhotoVogue Festival hosted numerous panel discussions on the intersection of visual art, ethics, and activism. This year’s programme featured, among others, voices such as Ami Vitale, Richard Mosse, John Hausdoerffer, Gavin Van Horn, Alice Aedy, and John Steele.

The festival is not just a celebration of photography, but an appeal to collective responsibility. “At a time when many of us feel uprooted, turning our attention to our fellow earthly companions offers ways to deeply connect with our places, revitalise a sense of creaturely belonging, expand our empathetic imagination, and embrace the collective wonders of being alive in a more-than-human world”, says Gavin Van Horn, Executive Editor of Humans & Nature Press Books.

This sentiment is particularly evident in the images of Imraan Christian (Noma and Venus Rebirth, both part of the Ma Se Kinders project), which portray mythological figures and life cycles, as well as in Choi Sungdong’s Coexistence, a poetic meditation on the movement and interconnection of migratory birds.

Since its inception, the PhotoVogue Festival has been at the forefront of ethical and aesthetic discourse, exploring issues of identity, representation, inclusivity, and visual culture. This year’s theme reinforces the power of photography not only as an art form, but as a tool for understanding and shaping our world.  

With a rich and compelling programme, the 2025 edition of the PhotoVogue Festival offers more than just images to admire – it presents visions to carry forward, narratives to protect, and a collective invitation to acknowledge the challenges faced by our planet and the need to take better care of it.

@photovogue

“It’s a choice to be true to oneself”

Tayachi also draws his artistic work narratives from the restrictions and threats faced by him and the queer community in Tunisia. Through photography and art, he aims to create a safe space for individuals to express themselves and share their personal and professional practices. “It’s a choice to be true to oneself and the other,” he says, addressing the courage it takes to be an artist willing to express personal traumas and present oneself in the public sphere in an environment where freedom is nothing but something longed for. This position of the artist should not be overlooked, as it pertains to their role as advocates for rights, especially when physical and virtual realms are restricted, censored, and unsafe.

Throughout his brief career as a visual artist and fashion photographer, Tayachi has sought to balance beauty and technical precision while embodying the emotional depth of his work, stating, “emotions are a language in itself, understood globally.” Acknowledging the hyper-aesthetic language of fashion films and photography, Tayachi’s artistic and personal work blends evocative environments, stunning visuals, and relatable narratives, all produced with the support of a close-knit community of like-minded creatives, from models to makeup artists and friends. His visual language features highly-contrasted and saturated beautiful faces and bodies hinting at Avedon’s stylistic plasticity. Tayachi’s eye for intense gazes and volumes and ability to capture his sitters’ energy result in graphic photos celebrating diversity and self-esteem. 

At the core of Tayachi’s practice lies the fostering of a safe space to communicate and co-create, supporting each individual’s pursuits through a community-driven approach that transforms personal narratives into collective ones. Creating has become for him a way of normalising certain emotions and impulses –  a form of therapy intended to legitimise self-love, deep listening and to connect with others, both in the production and in the restitution phases.

Working towards a major involvement in installation art, Tayachi finds the interactive, technological dimensions to be a necessary vehicle of connection to themes, environments and subjects of exploration. “For me, to engage with technology is key to expanding my own growth as a visual artist and the publics’ possibilities of connecting with my art practice,” he explains. And experimenting with the interactivity of art means Tayachi has to be open to embracing the unpredictability that comes with giving the public major involvement and closeness to the personal narratives he unveils. 

Tayachi’s most recent show within the Jaou Biennial programme marks not only his first solo show but also his personal commitment to undertake a journey of self-exploration and more ambitious projects, which he hopes to pursue in Europe, through education programmes and a constant confrontation with a foreign art market and public outside Tunisia.

@bachir_tayachi

“What I prefer is the more human side, the less performative side. I’m rarely influenced by fashion photographers”

She also travelled to Russia around this time, setting up an impromptu studio and shooting only women; on graduating she did not immediately pursue photography though – or at least not as a career. “A lot of my peers started being photographers but I just kind of disappeared,” she says. Actually she was still working, without showing anyone, shooting outside her many freelance jobs. By 2019, she was living in Ramsgate, a coastal town two hours from London, and intensively making images. “My main thinking was, ‘I just need to earn enough money to be able to keep on making this work’,” she says. “I could have done that forever, just kept working quietly – I was just really into the work, and felt like it was feeding me. It was very internal, like a conjuring, which is a strange word to use but I had a real push to have that feeling of satisfaction.”

Swan was drawn to making portraits, and in particular to photographing people “over and over again” – siblings Toni, Nikita and Odin, who she met in a bowling alley, and Brody, who lived on her street. Hiring a boat club 10 minutes from her house, she would shoot them, and then their families, comfortable in a space that cost £10 to hire and that everyone knew was neutral territory. It was low-pressure, crafty, fun, there was “no ego about it”, she says; her subjects were there out of curiosity and for their own enjoyment, though she gave them the images. “That made it too, because I didn’t want to be cajoling someone into something they didn’t want to do,” she says. “It was experimental, working out ideas.”

Initially Swan used a borrowed camera and loaned 1960s studio lights; she eventually bought her own lighting kit, “a really rubbish home studio set” and, though she originally learnt to shoot on film, a simple digital camera. “It wasn’t about having technical knowledge or expensive kit,” she says. “It was about being able to make images quickly and cheaply, without any barriers.” Deciding to push further, she found an empty shop in Scarborough, on the North Yorkshire coast, that she could use as a makeshift studio. “I wanted to find a space that was more public and busier, that would allow me to do the same thing I had been doing [in Ramsgate] but in a much more intensive way,” she says. “It was quite a clinical place, 1990s depressed architecture; I found it a safe place to base myself, where people came by and used the loo or bought a birthday card. It was very calm and accessible, but busy and full of life. I was trying to create a moment where it’s like seeing someone in the street, but there’s this very formal environment around them. I wanted people to not have the chance to move or change themselves, but be in a studio setting.”

These portraits were successful and helped bring Swan wider attention; it is an approach she has returned to since, setting up temporary studios in shopping centres, train stations and London’s financial district. Working this way allows her to see public faces and hone in deeper, cutting out the visual noise of the street to focus on the individual. She is interested in how people’s bodies both conceal and expose their feelings and personalities, in the socially constructed gestures that allow us to conform, and the quirks that (sometimes involuntarily) mark us out. Swan’s gaze is comprehensive yet somehow not judgemental; something in her omniscience is warm. 

“I want to see people,” she says. “The way someone is with their body is definitely something I pick up on, and then other things come out – all the good, hidden stuff. There’s a formality I really enjoy [in a portrait session] and there’s an attention that’s there from them. But I don’t want to ask them to come back next week. Then they’ll sort out their hair and face, they’ll get rid of all the things that they think are not OK, but which I find so beautiful.”

It is something she has managed to maintain in her commercial work, which also took off in 2021 when she was signed by London agency Mini Title. Commissioned for a Givenchy ad campaign, she maintained small ‘imperfections’ on the models’ legs, for example, which to her are not imperfect at all. “Someone said to me once, ‘Do her a favour, take the spot away [with retouching]’,” Swan says. “The concept of that I find quite hard to get my head around. Those signs of life are the centre of everything my work pivots around.”

This sensibility does not preclude post-production. For Swan, retouching is about directing attention, creating an interesting image rather than ‘perfecting’ a body, making blocks of colour to emphasise shapes or shadows, or creating an overall palette or feel. She is into early colour photography, Paul Outerbridge or Erwin Blumenfeld, though she adds that she discovered them later, and has always had her own sense of colour. Guy Bourdin seems an obvious touchpoint for some images but she is not enthused; the subjects in his work are models being fantasy-posed by a man, she says, and are presented in such a polished way. “What I prefer is the more human side, the less performative side,” she explains. “I’m rarely influenced by fashion photographers – Sally Mann, August Sander, Helmar Lerski, Alex Prager, Rineke Dijkstra, Gérard Schlosser, Roni Horn, William Mortensen are big influences.”

For Swan the apparently awkward is actively interesting, pointing towards the subject’s life, and what they do off- camera. When she shoots people in-studio in public places, she arranges it so they have some privacy, and therefore feel less self-conscious; she sometimes asks them to pose, but only because she is trying to help them relax. “Sometimes they’re so scared, you have to kind of let them into their body,” she says. For fashion photography and commissions she may have to exert more influence, but still prefers making suggestions to giving orders, and often just asks people to pause their own gestures. Even so, she says shooting commissions is very different to her personal work – the sitter has been chosen, and is often a model, there is a large team in the studio, a desired outcome, and very little time. But increasingly commissioners are coming to her because she includes that sense of the person, or even a slight sense of rawness, and these quirks are making it into the final images. “That’s always a win,” she says.

Swan’s outlook means she is as interested in hands, or legs – or any other part of the body – as she is in faces; for her, portraits do not have to show faces, and in fact she sometimes crops them out. “It’s just splitting up the body and letting those other parts speak,” she says. “There’s a level that’s enjoying taking away the ingredients of the face and having the poetry of the body and how that hand is, letting something else speak other than the eyes or the lips or the face.”

This is especially evident in Swan’s self-portraits, which she started making in 2020; they allow her to do “body work”, she says, without having to push someone else’s boundaries. And push someone’s boundaries they might, because they are often obliquely sexual, showing armpit stubble, or a nylon-clad crotch, or stretch marks. The idea of the ‘female gaze’ is often bandied around as if women see intrinsically differently – and although the idea is that women adopt a ‘male gaze’ in patriarchies – but perhaps there is something intrinsically female about Swan’s self-portraits, about the clash between her intimate knowledge of inhabiting a female body in 21st century Britain, and her in-depth understanding of photography. “I’ve never really said these photographs are self-portraits because I don’t even feel they are,” she explains. “It’s just a way of being able to use a female body without limits. To almost be the photographer and not be the subject.

“There is a grotesque element which feels slightly animal, which purposefully undermines the immediate perception it’s this shiny, sexy image. I’m reluctant to gender it too much, but I did feel like I was speaking to women, and that they would understand why. Seeing that armpit, or that stretch of skin, for women it feels like home rather than something that’s terribly out of the ordinary or difficult to look at.”

It is an insight that suggests something punky, and Swan loves the idea that her sitters – some of whom are now A-listers, contemporary icons of femininity – will see this work. But it also suggests another strand in her practice, which circles around looking at looking. Swan is well aware of the power of photography, and particularly portrait photography. She likes to shoot in-studio because her subjects know they are being photographed and can form a relationship with her, no matter how brief. She is uncomfortable with the idea of sneaking a photograph, with “snapping away when they’re not quite primed for it”.

Her images are also sometimes obliquely critical, often including a stereotype that queries this kind of photograph, why it is so prevalent, and what that says about our culture. It will be interesting to see how much irony she can maintain in her commercial work, but so far the balance is struck. “For years I thought I would just work by myself for the love of it – which was success to me,” she says. “But to realise that others are going to share in that intensity was really liberating.”

She is also continuing to push, recently making more work outside, exploring how landscape can exist in her practice, and shooting a series of shorts titled PLAYS. All three shorts focus on small moments, and particularly on body language; one shows a mother and child, physically close in the way that parents and young kids often are. The girl plays with her mother’s hair, puts her fingers in a hole in the woman’s tights; it is staged but they are a genuine mother and daughter, and that shows. Opposite this pair a couple passionately kiss, demonstrating another kind of physical intimacy – their embrace was also carefully staged, based on a 1950s, old Hollywood tryst, but so unrealistic and abstracted it becomes sexless and almost absurd. Swan wanted the kiss to be as a little girl might see it, she says, how she remembers (un)comprehending adult intimacy as a child.

Swan also continues to photograph herself, and Brody, the boy – or now young man – from her street in Ramsgate. These days he is studying in London, and Swan says their sessions are different but still compelling. “I have known him for a long time, and he is special to me,” she says. “He had a trust in someone who was quite random, and I just find his face incredible, and the way that he is so grounded and unbothered by things. I could take his picture forever.”

@jet.swan

“Photographers don’t grow old, they simply become out of focus”

Stafford’s time in Paris wasn’t limited to fashion. Her explorations led her to discover the neighbourhood of Cité Lesage-Bullourde, a marginalised community slated for demolition. Through her photographs, she documented the daily lives of its residents, preserving a poignant moment in the city’s history.

Stafford’s empathy and curiosity drew her to global stories often overlooked by mainstream media. During the Algerian War of Independence, she traveled to Tunisia to document the plight of Algerian refugees. Six months pregnant at the time, Stafford captured the harrowing realities of life in the camps. Her photographs, including a striking image of a mother cradling her child, were published on the front page of The Observer, sparking international attention to French colonial brutality.

In the early 1970s, Stafford’s work took her to India, where she photographed Indira Gandhi, the country’s first female prime minister. This encounter ignited a lifelong fascination with India and its people. She later documented the lives of the Ghotul Muria and Warli tribes, offering an intimate view of communities often unseen by the world. Her travels also took her to Lebanon, where she captured moments of peace and everyday life in a country which was teetering between bursts of civil conflict and invasion. From shopkeepers to wedding celebrations, Stafford’s images reflected the richness of Lebanese society.

Throughout her career, Stafford often used fashion photography as a means to support her more personal and humanitarian projects. Her fashion work, characterised by wit and spontaneity, was groundbreaking. She deliberately subverted traditional norms, taking models out of glamorous salons and placing them in the chaotic streets of Paris. One iconic image features a model leaning on an umbrella in front of the Louvre, her stiletto heels dangling from her hand – a playful yet profound commentary on the collision of elegance and reality.

Stafford’s humanitarian focus extended beyond her camera. In 2017, she founded the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award, a social documentary photography award for women. The award, created in collaboration with FotoDocument, highlights projects that address social or environmental issues through a lens of positivity and solutions.

Stafford had a unique ability to connect with her subjects, whether photographing children in Paris, cultural icons like Édith Piaf and Twiggy, or survivors of war in Bangladesh. Her mentor, Henri Cartier-Bresson, taught her to see the “geometry of light” and how to become “invisible” on the streets, but Stafford’s larger Rolleiflex camera often drew attention. This didn’t deter her; instead, she used it to build rapport and capture candid, intimate moments.

Her images, often compared to those of Helen Levitt, showcase the extraordinary within the everyday. A photograph of children playing in Cité Lesage-Bullourde, for example, captures their theatrical antics and defiant joy amid a backdrop of poverty. Another striking image of a child carrying a bottle of milk reveals layers of resilience and vulnerability.

Marilyn Stafford passed away on 02 January, 2023, at the age of 97. Despite her self-deprecating humor – often referring to herself as a “jobber” rather than an artist – her work continues to inspire and affirm the power of photography to make a difference. The publication of Marilyn Stafford: A Life in Photography and its revised edition, along with retrospectives such as the one at the Akron Art Museum near her hometown, underscore her lasting influence.

Stafford once remarked that “photographers don’t grow old, they simply become out of focus”, yet her legacy remains crystal clear. After the success of their first edition, the book has been reprinted by Bluecoat Press. Now spanning over 250 pages with new and unseen photographs, this book remains the only one to feature Stafford’s life’s work. 

bluecoatpress.co.uk