*Fashion 01, Issey Miyake*, 1995 © Sarah Moon

Copy Editor: Zoha Baquar

Featured at Fotografiska New York, Sarah Moon: At the still point brings us an intensive yet dreamy visual journey. The exhibition concentrates Sarah Moon’s 30 years of photography creation, including 46 photographs and an installation around her 2006 film The Red Thread. Ethereal and romantic, Moon shares her vision and investigation of fashion, portraiture, landscape, still life and beyond.

*Les chiens de Maria*, 2000 © Sarah Moon

The exhibition name At the still point is quoted from T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)’s masterpiece Burnt Norton (1935):

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Moon’s images are “neither arrest nor movement.” Most of her subjects are females and animals. Jumping leopards, running dogs, flying birds and girls lowering their heads are captured and fixed on the medium with blurred details. This blurriness makes them unstable and creates an illusion of movement, as if they are stuck between the moment and eternity. Meanwhile, inanimate objects such as decaying statues and damaged puppets echo the human world with wounds and expressive sadness.

Hinted by their concealed facial features, either by an object, angle or the edge of the frame, Moon conveys diffidence, fear and uncertainty with her female subjects. In contrast, one portrait of a pelican stares directly at the viewer with its features immaculately focused, metaphorizing power, dominance and independence. The deep color tone and mottled edges created by using wet plates make Moon’s visual world dark, fragile, vulnerable, and inevitably, melancholic.

Moon carries the same expressive style with the film The Red Thread, which is based on the famous French folktale Bluebeard, or La Barbe Bleue, by Charles Perrault published in 1697. She interprets it in a contemporary context by telling the story of a young female singer who is manipulated by a producer into marriage and eventually escapes him to regain her freedom. The six fictional obituaries installations shown alongside the film are visually striking, provoking an atmosphere associated with the utmost fear of death.

*18 juillet*, 1989. *The Red Thread* © Sarah Moon

Moon started her career as a fashion model in the 1960s and became a fashion photographer and filmmaker in 1968. Her prominence in photography and filmography spanned the 1970s, and was followed by continuous publications, features and prestige, making Moon a living legend to this day.

Sarah Moon: At the still point is on view at Fotografiska New York through February 6, 2022.