Japanese born Mari Sarai is best known for her photographs of celebrity friends including Alice Dellal and Daisy Lowe. However, her newest exhibition entitled Naked brings forth a grittier vision, via an empowering take on feminine nudity. She states, “I wanted to express that the nudity of a woman is not limited to fulfillings men’s erotic desires. She is worthy of respect. A naked woman can possess her own style, independence and strength.” Wonderland’s Eunice Jera Lee speaks to Sarai about this latest project and the women in her life.

Tell us a little bit about your work in Naked.
It’s a very distinctive style from what you might have seen in naked pictures before. It’s a female’s eye on female nudity as a celebration of 21st century women. This is not pornography, I tried to create a new style of female nude photos.

How do the women in your life effect and inspire you – as you are very much about women empowerment?
I am born and raised in Japan. I have been to the US to live and now I reside in London. Analysing Eastern and Western cultures, women are very different between Asia and Europe. Asian society and the mentality is very male-oriented. Women are for the men and women’s bodies and nudity are for the man’s desire. I wanted all women to feel free, independent and strong. Those things inspire me a lot.

From Tokyo to Los Angeles to New York to London, how do the women you encounter in each city differ?
Greatly! Tokyo girls are cute and very girly.
American girls are animalistic and strong.
London girls are independent and tough.

Do you prefer shooting women to men? If so, why?
I do prefer shooting women, yes. Because I understand them more than men. And I can make my own mini-me in the shoot.

Who are the most exciting people you¹ve shot?
Amy Winehouse, Florence from Florence and the Machine, Janice Dickinson and Alice Delall

This is your first exhibition in Europe- what do you forsee for your future?
I would love to continue working on my Naked series and let the whole world know about my photographic style and who I am.

Photography: Mari Sarai
Interview by Eunice Jera Lee

View Naked from 16-20th September at Blackall Studios 73 Leonard Street London EC2A 4QS.

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What is your most memorable fashion moment so far?
Meeting with Edward Enninful one-on-one was special to me, I think he’s genius and It’s great that he could relate to me and give me advice on approaching the industry at a young age.

Celebrity or model you’d most like to work with?
I’ve worked with a lot of models I look up to. I feel so privileged to have lately shot the likes of Agyness Deyn, Eliza Cummings, Lily Cole and Jourdan Dunn.

Favourite designers?
I don’t have a favourite designer, I can appreciate and respect all. My taste changes constantly. As does most in fashion.

Did you meet Walter von Beirendonck/what was he like?
I met Walter, he was great, a genius! I’m always obsessing over crazy, fun and out there characters, Walter has no boundaries, his mind goes wild when it comes to work, it’s his life and I relate to and respect that.

How did von Beirendonck’s archived collections influence your photography?
Of course with such cool and wild designs it allows you to have fun with it and play! My favourite! No boundaries.

Favourite haunts in London to eat, shop and generally hang out.
I spend a lot of my time in model agencies (Select), catching up with friends and hanging out – they are like family.

Photography: Damon Baker
Styling: Way Perry
Interview by Eunice Jera Lee

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What does Britishness look like? It’s something that has been at the heart of much of Martin Parr’s work for over thirty years. His pioneering photography is instantly recognisable, an adjective for a certain very English aesthetic. From his early black and white interiors filled with chintz and TVs to chip shops in New Brighton. From close cropped acid red sunburnt faces to fairy cakes decorated with union jacks. He’s shot the rest of the world – from Tokyo to Morocco – but his approach and eyes could only have come from the UK.
The photographer is sitting with a cup of tea at his home in Bristol. The beautiful Georgian house is located in a practically pedestrianised area of the city. It is beautifully middle class. Nice wood tables and lots of garden space. Class is something that’s always been something that emerges in his work – the nuances that define strata society. That peculiarly British obsession.

“I am classically middle-class. I could not be more so and always will be. Why pretend otherwise? Of course in Britain we are more class-conscious. I have done more working-class communities. I did a book on middle-classes once in the late ‘80s. I like all the clichés associated with all classes. I look for clichés. Often the work I do is cliché-bound. It’s a familiarity which I can exploit.”

There is equally pathos and humour in his approach. Irony and vulnerability. Parr himself likes to watch comedians – enthusing about performers including Stuart Lee, Rod Gilbert and Kevin Bridges. “I’m fascinated by this whole business of what makes people laugh in terms of observations.” Parr’s work sometimes has the truth and immediacy of comedy – with the sound turned off. Part of it is his use of colour – which at times has veered to hyper, overwhelming saturation. “I think black and white, by nature, tends to be more nostalgic anyway. When I moved to colour I wanted to do more modern, contemporary subject matters so it automatically lent itself to colour and that sort of palette, which is often associated with commercial photography. Serious photography had a palette of black and white.”

The photographer’s latest series is an interesting document of social excess and decline entitled Luxury. From Dubai to China to Miami Basel – the images feel like the fall of Rome in giant sunglasses with a glass of champagne gripped desperately in one hand and a miniature dog in the other. “It’s basically people and money. When I was shooting it, of course, we didn’t know we were gonna leap into this crisis. So now, looking back, it’s slightly different. It’s more like an epitaph. Everyone was going completely mad in terms of trying to out-spend and out-debt and out-luxurise each other.” Parr entered the international world of the wealthy – horse races, art events, fashion shows, places where the rich were ‘enjoying’ themselves. “There’s a gene in me that has a responsibility if you like, to record and interpret the society that we live in. Not only in the UK, but generally. It’s a very subjective viewpoint but there is this documentary responsibility, which I can never get away from.”

Parr takes images of people unaware, where they expect to see photographers and ignore them. Despite being so tall, he is surprisingly unobtrusive when on the prowl for images. Wandering an art opening at the Rubell Collection in Miami during Art Basel he seemed delightfully invisible – bar a giant phallic flash diffuser which jutted out from the camera around his neck. “I can’t tell you what I do. Because only if you see me do it, can you explain it. I [take photographs] so naturally and so intuitively.”

Often the images can feel a little haphazard, cropped in strange ways, intentionally off kilter. Visually the Luxury series is less focused on details then Parr’s work a decade ago in for example ‘Common Sense’, with its acid pink close ups of fairy cakes and chips. The hyper-colour of his earlier work is also changing from the strong, overwhelming pop palette. “That was something that came with film and amateur film and flash, so I don’t have that now. They’re still colourful because the things I photograph are generally colourful but it’s not quite as super-saturated. I’m trying to get away from that to a certain extent…”

He used to use 67 or 35mm film but has moved onto digital. He doesn’t edit himself as he goes along, generally storing it until he decides what to print. His approach is fast. “I’m very fast in everything. People are always amazed how quickly I do it. Sometimes you have to make it look as if you’re lasting longer. They get worried. My question is Why does everyone else take so long?”

Parr always wanted to be a photographer – with a direct clarity which seems to define him as a person. Originally from Surrey, he began taking photographs aged 13 encouraged by his amateur photographer grandfather. He went to college in Manchester in 1970 aged 18 and was working pretty full-on from that point and became part of the renaissance of independent British photography that emerged in the 1970s. He joined Magnum Photos in 1994 and has published over 60 books. Parr is very successful commercially alongside his artwork – though largely working abroad in fashion and advertising. He’s shot fashion spreads for magazines like Madame Figaro and French ELLE and even published his own fashion newspaper in recent years. But his interest is of course not straightforward. “When I do a fashion shoot I have no notion or don’t even take on board what label it is. I wouldn’t know a Prada from a Gucci if you stuck it in front of me.”

There was always a touch of autobiography in his work. “I’m a tourist myself. I’m middle-class myself. I’m a consumer myself. So, many of the things I’ve looked at are things that I am myself.” He notes, “One of the things you do with photography is, it has a therapeutic element so it can help to identify my particular strange relationship to Britain, a sort of love-hate relationship, you can help to define that through working it through, if you like. So that’s something that does go on. You don’t reach conclusions. You just clarify your thoughts.”

Parr is currently showing a giant retrospective at BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art in Gateshead. Entitled Parrworld, the exhibition shows a large selection of the photographer’s iconic imagery and his latest Luxury series. However 60% focuses on the artist’s collections – rare Japanese photography books, photographic prints by his contemporaries include a large number of British documentary artists, a small dip into his monstrous collection of postcards and the weird stuff he gleans from the world like a miner panning for gold. These works are being displayed in vitrines like perfect museum objects. Obama campaign flip flops. Sadam Hussein watches. Margaret Thatcher Miner’s Strike memorabilia. Bin Laden bumph. 9/11 ephemera. The objects have political connections and a sense of coming from one specific climax in history. They walk a line between serious, referencing war and unrest, but are often incredibly banal and funny. You can’t help but feel Parr has his tongue in his cheek when he chooses what he collects.

“Some are political, some are not. But there’s often an element of the political people. There’s a massive amount of Obama ephemera created so I just dipped into and picked some of the things that I thought were interesting. The more obscure things rather than plates and mugs. Like Obama condoms.” What is interesting is how some of the propaganda items are in favour of say Saadam Hussein and very similar objects against. The boundaries get very blurry. The objects continue Parr’s satirical eye on the work. “There’s an inherent ambiguity in them.”

Veering between social commentary and fiction, directness and ambiguity – the collections have a strong relationship to his imagery. “I think of my photography as being a form of collecting. You’re going out, finding pictures and making sense of them all, making sense of the world, putting it into a project, trying to order it, to give it some sense of narrative and functionality,”

Words: Francesca Gavin

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #20, Nov/Dec 2009

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One of the most celebrated photographers of the last decade, Ryan McGinley exposes the inspiration behind the lens for his latest exhibition.

There is one very unfashionable word to sum up the very stylish work of Ryan McGinley: Beauty. His work is pulsatingly filled with unadulterated beauty. He takes honest, hazy, dreamlike images that seem to constantly exist in what cinematographers call the magic hour. “Beauty is a big part of my work. Beauty in locations, beauty in composition, beauty in colors, beauty in light, beauty in a person, beauty in spirit, and beauty in the unknown,” the artist enthuses.

McGinley always wanted to be an artist and live in NYC. He’s achieved both. His work grew out of the skateboard scene – originally making videos with friends as a teenager, editing them with two VCR machines. “Skating is a lot about watching as is photography. You get a sense of people and how they operate. You get to be outside all day and observe light and the way it reflects on people, buildings, street corners.” he recalls. “I realized I was more interested in the in-between moments and in people’s personalities than in filming the tricks.” He would photograph his friends, fellow artists, people he met in bars and eventually some he cast at their most wild, optimistic and free. Like Larry Clark in his Tulsa days, McGinley and his camera became synonymous. McGinley’s subjects include his friends, people found at downtown bars, castings. Here the process of taking a photograph becomes invisible. Yet rather than the confessional photography of Larry Clark or Nan Goldin McGinley namechecks the photojournalistic approach of Will McBride as an influence.

For the past five years McGinley has gone on road trips across America, acting as a director to the changing crop of edgy naked youths going wild in nature. “My photographs have always been about adventures. When I started to develop as an artist I would make little books of inspirational images. A lot of the images I liked the most were from children’s books. I spent many days sitting on the floor of the NY Public Library Children’s section taking photos of the illustrations in the books.” He originally studied graphic design, and that sense of shape and composition still informs his work. As he puts it, “you have to make it all work inside of that small rectangle.”

His debut solo show in London this September at Alison Jacques is entitled Moonmilk. It is a departure from the lively work that he has become so well known for. The moody, atmospheric series has all been shot in caves. “After my 2007 trip I wanted to do something completely different, to abandon the sun and the spontaneous moment. The cave photographs are just that. They are very theatrical. The first step is to find an interesting location in an awe-inspiring and dangerous place. I then carefully choose the color palate that we are going to bring out with spotlights, and then I start working with the models to find a pose. Each exposure takes 2 to 3 minutes so they have to hold completely still. It’s a very, very slow process.”

It must seem exceptionally slow to McGinley in particular, who admits excessive energy. “I can’t stay still. I’m one of those people whose leg shakes constantly when I’m sitting down. I always have to be doing something. If I’m not making photos, I’m editing them. If I’m not editing them, I’m researching inspiration. Whenever I’m out I’m looking to meet new models. My eyes are always peeled. I have 10 to-do lists going at any given time. I even take notepads to the movies with me so I can remember what inspired me! My friends make fun of me. It’s a sickness, but a good one. It all revolves around art and it’s process. If I couldn’t do that I think I’d be in the loony bin.”

McGinley has become one of the most successful artists to have emerged from the Lower East Side in the past decade, living on Canal Street in Chinatown with fellow in demand artist Dan Colen. He was originally attracted to the city because his brother Michael and his boyfriend – both drag queens – lived there. “I used to go and stay with them as a young boy and they would do performances for me and take me on day trips down to the Village. In my hometown in New Jersey there is a high point from where you can see the skyline of the city. Driving over that hill I would always dream of moving there. We took a lot of school trips to MoMA, The Guggenheim, The Met, and The Museum of Natural History. It’s nice to have work in most of those museums’ permanent collections now.” The young outsider has now become the darling of the establishment. McGinley was the youngest person to ever have a solo show in the Whitney in New York aged only 24. A year later he had a solo show at PS1. Awards and accolades have followed.

At first there was a live fast, die young vibe behind his work but it’s something that seems to have changed. Surrounding himself with people who live on the edge is part of what makes his work so bittersweet. “My brother’s death made me realize that you have to live every day to it’s fullest. You never know what’s going to happen. Just the other day one of my closest friends, Dash Snow, died of a heroin overdose. My work is about celebrating life,” he explains. “I want to have adventure after adventure and photograph each one of them every step of the way. When I turned 30 everything changed for me. I feel like I’m going to still be working when I’m 90 years old. I’m so excited about that.”

Words: Francesca Gavin

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #19, Sep/Oct 2009

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