“We were all on the road: photographers, models, makeup artists, hairdressers, fashion stylists. Every week it was a different location in Europe…We were young and in need of expression. The great fashion and creative directors let you roam, they gave you twenty pages to express your vision—it was a complete creative playground where we could be rebellious, and the word compromise was not spoken, not even thought about.” This is how photographer Stephanie Pfriender Stylander describes the heady life of a fashion photographer in the 1990s. This new monograph introduces you to what Pfriender Stylander produced in that atmosphere: evocative photographs capturing sweeping, cinematic fashion stories and intimate portraits of celebrities, all tinged with the photographer’s gritty realism. From a very young, unknown Kate Moss to rock legend Keith Richards, Pfriender Stylander finds the hidden essence in her subjects, an unseen character and vulnerability in even the most seasoned veterans.
Inspired by Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave and John Cassavetes films, Pfriender Stylander’s work is cinematic. Fashion models, actors and musicians (including Joaquin Phoenix, Nicole Kidman and Björk, among others) are transformed into characters who embody her vision.