Sarah Moon - Photographer

[Multitudes]

Continued ...

 

[Multitudes]

Continued ...

 

[Multitudes]

The last bunch ...

 

[MissMagAddict]

So Beautiful
Thank You Very Much for doing the screen captures Multitudes

Here is some interesting background info on the Pirelli Shoot...

Pirelli Calendar by Sarah Moon anno 1972



The legend
In spite of the fame achieved, problems in creating unusual photographs, which measure up to that fame, begin to appear.

1972 is a year of change. Derek Forsyth, the art director, is perfectly aware of the need to find a way to differentiate the Pirelli Calendar from the abundance of p*rn*gr*phy floating around, and from vulgar images, which seem to shout from every street corner. Forsyth understands that the public is tired of seeing close ups of nude bodies, and wants something new - something authentically female.

Thus the decision to take a risk - to entrust the 1972 edition to a woman photographer: Sarah Moon.

Sarah Moon has been described as an impressionist photographer. Moon uses 35 mm film, loves soft backgrounds, and makes heavy use of plays of light. Her photos have a style that reminds one of paintings. As a person, Moon is moody, her coldness leaves people perplexed, and she is not well liked by journalists.

Moon works in harmony with her assistant, Mike Youel, to whom she leaves many tasks so that she is free to concentrate on the photography.

Paris is chosen as the location for this year's shoot, a city Sarah Moon dearly loves. Paris is a choice that will not weigh heavily on Pirelli's budget. The Villa Les Tilleuls is the site for the photographs, it is now abandoned, but served as headquarters for the Gestapo during the Second World War. A lot of work is needed to get it in shape, and Moon, does most of it herself. The result is a location out of this world, with a fantastic atmosphere.

There is no precise theme for this year's Calendar: the subject is the woman, not as a provocateur of erotic messages, but secure in her femininity.

Sarah Moon desires to work with models of her own choosing: Mick Lindburg, Suzanne Moncur, Boni Pfeifer, Inger Hammer, Magritt Rahn, and Barbara Trethman. All are petite, far from the idea of voluptuousness.

With them, Sarah Moon is patient and meticulous, and able to create a rapport of spontaneity and friendship, which lends authenticity to the images-there is no need to be sexy at all costs.

This is criticised by some men, to the point that they judge the Calendar to have a lesbian quality.

The press, however, likes the Calendar and the success of this edition is actually heightened by the insinuations surrounding it.

Presentation
The first woman to photograph the calendar was the ex-model Sarah Moon, who took the 1972 Pirelli pictures - often regarded as some of the most beautiful - in the once gracious Villa les Tilleuls, across the road from Chateau de la Malmaison, near Paris. The structure of this calendar, with each month separated by a sheet with the pictures, initiated a new style and also a new business: opportunists bought up black-market calendars, framed each shot and charged £100 per picture.

The theme
A fully 'female' Calendar. Sarah Moon, former models that became photographer, is in fact the first woman called by Pirelli to shoot the calendar. Sarah does not follow a specific theme, if not that of the waiting between women: waiting for rich customers of a deluxe 'maison', or a whorehouse, that recalls the impressionist atmosphere of a period between the beginning of the last century and the Twenties.

The photographer
Sarah Moon began her career on the other side of the lens, as a model, but she considered that profession boring, and rapidly established herself as a photographer and director. Moon's photographic style reminds one of painting, though she considers photography and painting to be entirely different arts. Moon has been defined as an "impressionist photographer" because of the images she produces by her use of soft, diffused light, and grainy, 35 mm film. She has worked for such personalities as Woolmark and Cacharel. Moon has won numerous awards for her photography and films. Her work is part of the collections of the National Library of Paris and the International Museum of Photography in New York.

 

[Multitudes]

You're very welcome MissmagAddict, and thank you for the info! ... I think the writer is right in saying "the subject is the woman, not as a provocateur of erotic messages, but secure in her femininity". What gives it its edge is that it goes beyond or moves inbetween any definable sexual contexts, may it be hetero- or homosexual etc., and that's what gives it its creative energies and you might say, its artistic merit, compared to, what I normally associate with the Pirelli Calendar. ...

 

[Multitudes]

Fashion 1, Issey Miyake, 1995

L’oiseaux 1, 2000

Source: Michaelhoppengallery.com

 

[Bird]

Sarah

Well, since i been following her for quiet a long time ......... i would like to help in some way on this thread ...... and as far as i know ........ i can say that Paolo Roversi, wich i also love, is more likely the one who gets inspired with Sarah ........ but becouse this is a matter of enjoing art ...... it make no sence to me to get there ...... they are both great photographers.
For techincal reasons, their work, look like each others ..... ( mood, movment, non sharp images, b&w ) but specially, they love to work with polaroids ...... b&w ( 665, 55 type and 8x10 ) long exposures, double exopsure, wide open stops and old lenses .......
I never had the chance to meet Sarah,... but luckley for me, i did meet Mr.Roversi, he was at the bookstore that was on W Brodway, in NY, presenting his book called " Nudi" ....... ther wasnt so many people arround so i had the chance to talk with him about his work,.... and when i was leaving, he signed the copy of my book, literaly with this words ....

" Fai sempre espozioni lunghie, cosi lasci all'anima il tempo di apparire ... "

What can i say .........there is one word that tells everything about his search and probablley Sarah as well ............ and i feel and belive ...... we all can see ...... " l'anima " of the portrait ...... on all their beautifull pictures ........and the magic happend infront of us when we see them ...

Thank you Sarah, and Paolo for your magic.

PD. ( if u can, get Sara book, called Coincidences ..... you wont regret it. there is always something new to discover on thoses pictures ..... i always do ....... and i look over 100 time to it already !! )

Love and peace.

Estevan

 

[Multitudes]

as far as i know ........ i can say that Paolo Roversi, wich i also love, is more likely the one who gets inspired with Sarah ........ but becouse this is a matter of enjoing art ...... it make no sence to me to get there ...... they are both great photographers.

What can i say .........there is one word that tells everything about his search and probablley Sarah as well ............ and i feel and belive ...... we all can see ...... " l'anima " of the portrait ...... on all their beautifull pictures ........and the magic happend infront of us when we see them ...

Thank you Sarah, and Paolo for your magic.

Estevan, you're quite right, there is no need, eventhough the traditional notion of "influence" is amazingly persistent. Although the logic of influence has been deconstructed, reinvented and reversed by several critics during the last seventy years, many people can't resist its attraction. T.S. Elliot challenges it elegantly in his 1919 essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent":

Whoever has approved this idea of order (...) will not find it proposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past

Or more radical put by art historian Michael Baxandall:

But influence I do not want to talk about

Elliot propose a reverse mechanism, not instead of it, but next to it; the past is also altered by the present, while for Baxandall "influence" is a curse of art criticism primarily because of its wrongheaded grammatical prejudice about who is the agent and who is the patient: it seems to reverse the active/passive relation which the historical actor experiences and the inferential beholder will wish to take into account.

If one say that X influenced Y it does seem that one is saying that X did something to Y rather than Y did something to X. But in the consideration of good pictures and painters the second is always the more lively reality

As Baxandall sugest, in the case of any "good" artist, it is not only he/she who is the agent instead of the patient, but the kind of activity which he performs on the work of the predecessor is much more diverse and complex than what is implied by the shallow term "influence":

If we think of Y rather than X as the agent, the vocabulary is much richer and more attractively diversified: draw on, resort to, avail oneslf of, appropriate from, have ressource to, adapt, quote, differentiate oneself from, assimilate oneself to, assimilate, align oneself with, copy, address, paraphrase, absorb, make a variation on, revive, continue, remodel, ape, emulate, travesty, paraody, extract from, distort, attend to, resist, simplify, reconstitute, elaborate on, develop, face up to, master, subvert, perpetuate, reduce, promote, respond to, transform, tackle ...-everyone will be able to think of others

The complex way in which art acts upon predecessors suggests that it is not so much the present but rather the past which is conditioned by a perpetual flux. It is precisely this idea that is elaborated by Mieke Bal in her 1999 book "Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, preposterous History". reading contemporary art works in their relation to Caravaggio or other baroque works, she demonstrates the idea that art's engagement with what came before it, involves an active reworking of the predecessor.

Hence, the work performed by later images obliterates the older images as they were before that intervention and creates new versions of old images instead.

If we take Eliot's, Baxandall's and Bal's critigue of the idea of influence into account, it entails a major shift in the discourses of art(every artform!). It breaks down the hierarchy constituted in the shallow term "influence", and we are left with much more interesting questions. We can now start to see/read art for what art should be, a reinvention/reconcentration of matter.

Just some thoughts on influence, but back to magical Sarah Moon. I do see it! ...

 

[Multitudes]

And the magic comes here ...

Monika Mohr Galerie

 

[MissMagAddict]

Thank You Multi I needed a good dose of Sarah Moon today......

I see my new Avy

 

[MissMagAddict]

Vogue Nippon Gioiello May 2007
A Glimpse Inside My World
Sarah Moon's Contribution
Editor: Ekuko Dobashi



scanned by MMA

 

[MulletProof]

^ ..the lighting..

[is gioiello a supplement? of what kind? ]

 

[MissMagAddict]

^Yes...a jewellery supplementThere's an Italian Vogue Gioiello Magazine that comes out maybe 6 times a year

 

[MulletProof]

^ahh.. and a nipponese gioiello.. sounds heavenly.

 

[MissMagAddict]

US Vogue March 1990
B&W Version of Ad in Post #87


scanned by MMA

 

[ruslana rules]

Zoom Magazine - American Edition - #14 - 1982 Source: ebay.com

 

[MissMagAddict]

US Vogue September 1991


source | scanned by MMA

 

[ChrissyM]

thanks for bumping the thread MMA

I'd forgotten how good sarah moon is

 

[ruslana rules]

I bought these on ebay.







Source: The Sunday Times Magazine - UK- 1974- Article about Janet Reger & lingerie - Scanned by Me

 

[kissmesweet]

Thanks!

I love Sarah Moon's use of lighting and coloring. With such subtly, her photos manage to look very sexy.