Literature

"When I shoot flowers or any still life, or fashion, colour forces me to be more abstract, I have to make the effort to transpose it, in order to get closer to what it was that first impressed me. For me, black and white is closer to introspection, to memories, to loneliness and loss, I don't see the same in colour - it's another language, a living language." - Sarah Moon

Ethereal and elegant, Sarah Moon's photographs are almost abstract in their painterly qualities. Texture, surface, seeing, believing, dreaming; it is difficult to summarise their content without pointing to the evident romantic and melancholic mood that emanates from the work. Moon - who came to prominence in the 1970's, breaks from the traditions of 'Fashion Photography' choosing instead to investigate a world of her own invention without compromise.

Sarah Moon (b. 1941) was born in England and began her career as a fashion model in the 1960s. Since 1968, she has worked as a fashion photographer and film maker. Her photographic work has been published in Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Marie-Claire, Graphis, Life and numerous other magazines. Her books include Improbable Memories (1980), Little Red Riding Hood (1986) Vrais Semblants (1991), Inventario 1985-1997 (1997) and Photopoche (1998). She has made more than 150 television commercials and a film on the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1995). Moon won the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award for Applied Photography in 1985 and the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1995.