Photography Inspiration: Lise Sarfati

NO, I haven't abandoned this blog (why the hell do I feel guilty because I'm not posting things here everyday? I don't know. Sucks though). I'm just taking my time to absorb things, and not let fashion play its magical trick on me - turning otherwise normal people into ADD-ridden consumerist psychos that move on to the next thing before they can even remember what they wanted 30 seconds ago (I'm a bit like that, but nothing compared to some twitterers who discuss which shoes/dress/hat/underwear they're going to buy ALL DAY LONG). No. Just because this is about clothes that everything HAS to be about clothes, okay?

So last night I was looking at my bookshelves for inspiration and I found something that The Boyfriend bought a few months ago and never had a chance to look at. It's a photography book by French photographer Lise Sarfati called Fashion Magazine: Austin Texas. I was intrigued, because when I picked it up I though it was one of those arty super glossies being ironic in its title, but it was anything but.

I found that this is another one of Sarfati's American projects in which she travels to middle-America (in this case Austin, Texas) and captures her 'characters', young middle-class girls, in their suburban environment - all clad in Alaïa, Louboutin, Burberry, amongst other super brands. There's little about the images that resemble a true fashion editorial - they are more like staged, over stylised moments of this girls real lives.

I love the nostalgic mood of the pictures, and The Boyfriend said that he bought it because it reminded him of Gregory Crewdson, one of his idols.

Each "editorial" is divided by "adverts" - images of fashionable branded objects taken probably in Sarfati's subject's houses, and in between these adverts there are two great, intimate interviews ( more like conversations with the photographer) with two designers I really admire: Azzedine Alaïa and Rick Owens.

Brilliant inspiration.