Emma Summerton cut her teeth in the world of fashion photography. An admirer of the work of Sarah Moon and Paolo Roversi published in Vogue Italia, she later worked for the magazine, as well as for many other prestigious titles. The beauty of her images, however, lies in much more than just her subjects. The variety of her photographic repertoire encompasses still life, narrative and fashion. It is in the cross-fertilisation of her visual work and her fashion shots that the spark of a creation flirting with mystery can be perceived.
The Australian-born photographer now lives in London, where she is enjoying a brilliant career. Her first editorial was shot in Polaroid. A technique she has never abandoned. Polaroid is also used in her latest series, “Messages”. This analogue work may explain the artist’s attraction to contrasts and materials in her photographs.
From one medium to another, the particular identity of her images is partly due to the vividness of the colours and the characteristic way she embraces light and plays with shimmer. Inside, bodies and subjects are recomposed. She also adopts a sometimes surprising point of view, as in her Hydra series, where the photographer’s point of view merges with that of the model. In her work, she explains that she seeks to get to know her models before shooting, so as to integrate their personalities into her work. This is undoubtedly how the vibrations of the body come to intersect with those of the light on the surface of the image.
Off-camera shots, superimpositions, moiré colour palettes and optical effects reinforce or bring out these mystical themes directly from the image, in a dialogue with early 20th-century pictorialist photography. They also offer an air of magic and mystery inherent to her inspiration. The title of her latest exhibition, “14 Spells” (to save your life), only confirms what we perceive.
A kind of bewitchment of forms seems to be at the enduring heart of her work, when bodies lack gravity or disappear beneath a veil, when flowers expose themselves like UFOs in the night, when vernacular legends are a source of wisdom.
Angleterre – Londres