Sarah Moon: On the Edge | Howard Greenberg Gallery
Sarah Moon, Papillon by Christian Dior, 2022 Platinum print, 60 x 50 cm, edition #1/15
Written by Makenna Karas
Photo Edited by Kelly Woodyard
Our lives are expansive collections of memories that once housed living, breathing moments. So often, we reach out to touch one and find that it has already fallen away through our fingertips and into a realm we can never fully access again. It is the essential nature of loss, which we must continuously grapple with at every age.
Sarah Moon, L’échappée belle, 2021 Gelatin silver print, 15 5/8 x 19 5/8 inches, edition #2/20
In her endeavor to explore that tapestry of loss that blankets our lives, renowned French photographer Sarah Moon searches for “that second that cannot happen again” in her latest exhibition, “On the Edge. On display at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York from February 17th through April 6th, the exhibition presents an array of images that Moon has curated herself from the past four decades of her career, ranging from fashion to landscape photography. Yet the images have been intentionally taken out of context and isolated within their ambiguity, lending to the sense of mysterious beauty that permeates the show. Moon shares that she is “trying to get to the essential” of that mystery, leaving each shot resting with exquisite precarity “on the edge of that attempt.”
Sarah Moon, La Funambule, 2023 Gelatin silver print; printed 2023 50 x 60 cm, edition #4/20
Balancing on her own edge is the subject of “La Funambule,” a gelatin silver print 2003 depicting a woman frozen within her precarity as she balances on a tightrope. The image is beautifully perplexing, denying you all context or narrative. Instead, it invites you to reflect on walking the tightrope that is the transitory nature of any moment we experience. You can feel the danger. With a quickening pulse, you can sense the capacity that hovering at such heights holds for disaster. Yet, within that fragility, there is strength.
Sarah Moon, Fashion 11, Yahji Yamamoto, 1996 Color pigment transfer print, 22 x 28 1/4 inches, edition, #1/5
Basking in its fragile allure is “Fashion 11” from 1996, a classy fashion shot of a woman enshrouded in her guise. Carrying a sense of mystery and stolen time, the image suggests a story it will never reveal. The woman is in motion as if running off to a gala or dinner party, hiding her face from the lens. Known for breaking the conventional bounds of fashion photography, Moon does not present her smiling or posing but in a natural state—her cherry-stained lips purse as her gaze falls downward, injecting enigmatic dimensions into a fleeting moment.
Sarah Moon, Hommage à Bonnard, 1997 Color pigment transfer print, 22 x 28 1.4 inches, edition #6/15
Produced the following year, “Hommage à Bonnard” pushes even further up against conventional expectations, presenting an intimate image of a woman curled up naked in a bathtub. With her head resting gently to one side in a slouch of resignation, her vulnerable presence is a window into the underside of raw beauty. Stripped of clothing and artifice, her nude body connects with the lens in a manner that conveys the exhaustion that accompanies the human condition.
Sarah Moon, En roue libre, 2001 Gelatin silver print, 19 5/8 x 23 1/2 inches, edition #4/20
As with every image of the show, all meaning is denied, and all context is excluded. The moments Moon has preserved have all long since ceased to be. Yet each shot reaches out and pulls at something aching within you, a testament to the talent and precision of Moon’s work.
Sarah Moon, Sveta pour “Hussein Chalayan,” 2000 Color pigment transfer print, 56 x 72 cm, edition #11/15
