Sophie Delaporte, Early Fashion Work
In this series Sophie Delaporte has achieved an accomplished style, a photographic language where sweetness balances innocence and determination outweighs diversion. The depth of color, staging, gestures and simple fun of her imagery evoke the world of storytelling. The photographer likes to imagine situations that do not exist, creating unusual combinations between the image and the purpose it serves.
“A fashion photograph capable of exceeding the lifetime of a monthly magazine requires a certain duplicity. This duplicity is the photographer’s who undertakes selling a product while hiding the secret ambition of creating art. The fashion photograph defines itself between the lines of this dichotomy...Some of these young photographers - and Sophie Delaporte is the most shining example - keep the evidence of a certain ambivalence between the limitations of both cultural and creative in the genre they have chosen. In 1994, when I discovered the work of Sophie Delaporte, it fascinated me.” - Martin Harrison, photography critic [1]
The construction of each scenario reveals a creature from an abstract dream that mixes fantasy and reality. Women are between two ages and often rooted in childhood, far from conventional representation. “I like images that are not obvious and leave room for interpretation, those that offer several levels of reading,” said Delaporte. The photographer draws inspiration from poetry “for its surreal and shifted world”. She also draws from Matisse, 1930s photography, the films of Fellini and Godard, and Guy Bourdin for his free association of images within the fashion world.
Sophie Delaporte soberly assumes her freedom as a woman and a photographer. Her approach, both invigorating and innovative, whispers a wish to break free of social pressure. It murmurs the possibility of a world of fantasy by suggesting an alternative vision of fashion photography.
[1] Mois de la Photo catalog, Paris, 2002.