The youth of today face insuperable obstacles: a cost-of-living crisis, recession, gender, cultural and equity wars, as well as internalised pressures to respond to the time-honoured accusations of indolence often flung their way. While these cultural pressures require us to foster a sense of togetherness, generationally speaking, it’s important that, amongst all the noise, we remember the importance of individuality. Persona, the bold new photobook from photographer Sarah Stedeford and her collaborator Jon Morales echoes this very sentiment, featuring portraits shot over the course of 2022 that explore the art of self-expression through sartorial flair.
This new work comes from Sarah’s ongoing photo-series, Beautiful Croydon, an entirely street-cast project which challenged the stereotypes thrust upon the area, and first featured in i-D in 2021. Persona came about after Jon asked Sarah for a print of Max — a kickboxing punk who featured in the series — to give as a gift. From there, the duo set about envisioning a fashion editorial charged with emotional intensity.
“Fashion is a way of wearing your personality on the outside,” Sarah says. “It’s the first cue we have to someone’s identity when we first meet them. A way of saying who you are immediately but often subtly. It’s creativity and expression in the everyday. Even someone who doesn’t think they are dressing in a way that identifies them is consciously choosing to wear something to appear a certain way.”
Powerful personalities, scouted on the streets and preselected from Sarah and Jon’s inner circles, appear a mixture of their own clothes and Jon’s styling. The result celebrates the subjects’ individuality and makes a sharp storyboard of a modish generation.
“When casting, we were looking for unique individuals who are really in tune with themselves,” Sarah says. “There’s a strength and a resilience in these people that they know who they are, and they celebrate that. They aren’t afraid to stand out from the crowd, or to be seen as different. Some were friends of ours, like Morena, who was Jon’s assistant, and who transitioned during the course of the year we were working on the project.”
Honouring the personhood of everyone was a duty Jon took incredibly seriously. “Intuition had led us to choose subjects based on something we perceived about them: a way of walking, a haircut, or little energy that made us click,” he says. “Styling this project was a fantastic experience but also very difficult. All of them were such beautiful individuals and I often couldn’t get too creative because my main focus was in reflecting their inner-self and finding a balance. When Cesar, featured on page 084, asked me: Should I take my eye patch out? I replied: ‘No way! You’re incredible as you are.’”
Reminiscent of Janette Beckman’s portraits of the raw punk scene in Britain in the late 70s as well as Collier Schorr’s intimate open-ended study of gender ambiguity across the USA, Persona is presented as a portfolio of youth culture that pays attention to depth. The result is an elevation of fashion photography to a tableau vivant of social change told through diverse perspectives.
“The project documents and celebrates the fact that we are all inherently different, but, at the same time, that much of that is surface level and we can all connect on a deeper level,” Sarah says. “On a world-view scale, there is a strong momentum towards acceptance and inclusion and less of a need to fit people into specific narratives or pre-conceived perspectives based on their gender, race, background or because they have a mohawk or tattoos. This book honours that energy.”
To achieve unity in a collaborative work running 175 pages deep, the pair were required to place a great deal of faith in each other’s vision. “We come from different cities, communities and cultures but we came together to create a final image that has a shared visual narrative, something that can skip past all of these barriers as a free moving form of communication,” says Sarah. Jon grew up in Madrid, currently resides in London and has his sights set on creating more work in Paris. The narrative that belongs to him is therefore one inclusive of “past, present and future.”
“Sarah knew what she wanted from this project and so did I,” he adds. “But we listened and empathised with each other’s ideas which made it great to work on. I love how she works. Sarah creates an intimate bubble where the camera doesn’t exist, and she can begin a spontaneous interview while shooting that makes her catch you in your most free moment. She is a photo-therapist.”
With Persona, Sarah and Jon have willed a specific kind of kinship into existence; one that reminds us that while no two people in the world have the same personality, beneath our feet runs a current that stirs the very same sensitivities.
’Persona’ is published by Hercules Books and is available to purchase here.
Credits
All images courtesy Sarah Stedeford