Vrais semblants

This book presents a choice selection of some of Sarah Moon’s most stunning images. These sepia photographs invite us on a surrealist journey through the artist’s inner life and to places that are meaningful to her. It includes such well-known photos as her portraits of models, the Villecroze circus, the peacock, and the pink flamingos, Sunday in Grisy, Pauline and more.

As she writes in the book, “I often envy those who know how to photograph real life. Personally, I flee it—I start from nothing—I don’t bear witness to anything—I make up a story that I don’t tell, I dream up a situation that doesn’t exist—I create one place or erase another, I shift the light—I undo and then I attempt… I keep an eye out for the unplanned, I hope to recognize what I have forgotten—I take apart what I have built—I count on randomness and my greatest wish is to be touched at the moment I aim.”

“I photograph privilege—evanescence—the unlikely or the beautiful—I’m looking for emotion, which fills my quest all the more with despair.”
Sarah Moon