Steph: Firstly, yes, I think photography is very sexy. But regarding the ironic/clever angle, what I've found is that the art world takes itself incredibly seriously. It sees itself in a different echelon to all else, whereas the fashion world recognizes its ludicrousy a little more. The fashion world is, quite frankly, full of freaks—some of whom are pretty loveable. We're now at post-Jamie Haweksworth everything-orange-and-banal genre of photography, and trudging through the Johnny Dufort Lo-Fi, flash digital genre of the “anti-fashion” or “anti-romantic”.

Steph: I understand the intention behind it; I think it's pretty clever to take everything the industry deemed beautiful and aesthetically essential, including the hollowly romanticized analog fetish, and flipping it on its head by flattening all tonality and leaving it rawly, plainly digitized. It’s a very witty “fuck you” to the industry, but getting them to pay for it. It also highlights the knock-on effect of trendiness over actual, legitimate skill and beauty—subjective, I know, but that's another conversation… It’s like if x says it’s “in”, then all the magazines will want them for their cover. 

Mo: I feel like fashion is in the middle of it's scheduled oil maintenance so maybe we’re witnessing it through a transparent perspective now.

Steph: It's kind of a case of the chicken or the egg. Does it just take one person to say, "This is cool," and then everyone jumps on the bandwagon? Or does the evolution of prevalent photographers—and its effect on others—dictate the industry's evolution of taste? What comes first? Or is it both? Am I making any sense? Probably not.

Steph: This year [2019], I barely shot editorially and created a couple of videos for a startup brand called Labatut in Paris. They said I could shoot whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, whoever I wanted, and there would be no product featured at all—that was the best shoot ever. 

Steph: It made me realize that I had no urge to keep up with the musical chair, conveyor belt pressure of seasonal editorials. The work will end up in a magazine where, at best, people that can afford it will stop just briefly before flicking to another page, or it gets half a second air time on an Instagram feed. Unless it's progressive, a message people benefit from hearing, or ignites actual joy in someone, what, truly, is the point? Selling clothes, I suppose?

Steph: Another thing with photography, looking at any photographer I truly admire, they'll kind of dip their toe into the fashion scene every now and then where they can relay their message in a trojan horse-esque way, but otherwise, they're fine art photographers. That's why I love my friend Jack Davison. He sort of subverts all stereotypes of the fashion world bullshit and doesn't give a fuck about what's “cool” and “in”. He'll just work with lovely talented people when he feels like doing a fashion shoot, whereas you get these flash-in-the-pan photography trends as mentioned before, where someone will solely shoot fashion for fashion’s sake and it'll be in every magazine of every season. It's all the same people doing the same thing! It bores me a little, or maybe a lot.

Steph: I think the key is being on the outside looking in as opposed to the other way around. To be known solely as a fashion photographer is when I've lost sight of what’s important to me.

Mo: It's interesting to see commercialized incentives within fashion. I think a huge benefit to a lot of magazines could be less frequency.

Steph: I think that's what they're trying to do, right? Dazed was monthly when I worked there four years ago. Things become so diluted when you're doing so much of something—that's another thing I don't get with the frequency of shoots people do. The amount of energy, love and thought that should go into stories must become so diminished in their constancy. Calm the fuck down everybody! [both laughing]

Steph: I guess it's a game of keep-up, isn't it? Everyone is so neurotically anxious in this industry and I think the industry feeds off it and harnesses it. I guess that's the basis of the fashion industry; people are made to feel insecure by constant and impossible comparison, and we’re told our value increases by buying shit.

Steph: Again, last year I just took a step back and thought, “Am I happy doing this?” The answer was “No,” so I have to do what makes me feel good.

Steph: Shooting for Sinead O'Dwyer and using bigger—in comparison to sample size—girls, along with having an all-female team doing whatever the hell we wanted on the day, felt great. People responded to the work saying, “I woke up feeling disgusting this morning and I watched your film and I felt comfortable in my skin for the first time in so long.” I just thought that's why I'm doing this! After that, I shot Mabel for Labatut who is essentially a contortionist. Her movements transcend dancing, she’s just something else. 

Steph: Last year changed the way I cast for shoots entirely. The presence and confidence that people bring with their talent and story add such a rich layer to the shoot. I often refuse to shoot agency models these days, especially ones that are noticeably underweight. Like, I wonder what their agents are telling them? I’ve heard endless horror stories of what they're told when they visit their agencies regarding their weight and the bullshit euphemisms in demanding they lose more of it. 

Steph: Clichés and stereotypes tend to exist because they occur frequently, often not at the fault of the person at the center of the cliche. The fact that anorexia in this industry is so commonplace still is fucking disturbing.

Mo: When you sunk your teeth into fashion initially, what was your perspective of it and how has that changed?

Steph: My photography career began at the end of my internship with Dazed. Ashleigh Kane essentially launched everything when she published a series I shot based on female body hair, before it was a ‘thing” [laughing]. I owe so much to her, not to mention she's one of the loveliest people. After that, I was shooting things for Dazed for a while as a freelancer and, soon enough, it was a case of “playing the game” by essentially investing all the money I had in the world into countless editorials to build a portfolio. The people I’d met at the time were the scary Dazed editors, like, the big sort of top fashion editor types that I wouldn't dare ask to pass the stapler. [both laughing] I’d have nightmares about using the loo in the center of the office and anyone hearing me take a shit.

Steph: It's our duty as image makers to promote healthy new ideas. Whatever we shoot, whatever we dress people in and where is political as a cultural reflection. Sometimes the balance gets entirely warped and people will take certain, less integral elements of the shoot dead seriously and put, say, a white model in a Native American headdress... It’s like, “Fucking hell!” You're paying so much attention to the quirky, “fabulousness” of the clothes and the one thing you have to actually, genuinely take seriously you go and throw out the bloody window by sticking a girl in blackface! It's crazy to think about how people get so wrapped up in their insane bubble and think it's “art”. Dude, it’s not art if it’s racist. 

Mo: I agree. It's about thinking about the humanity of it. It's overdue but the narrative is changing. However, it's a balance of wanting to drive an important idea forward but not doing it as a box to tick.

Steph: People shoot weird to be weird. They don't stop to think, “Why am I shooting this?” and, "What is the reason behind this potato balancing on this girl's shoulder?" It's the same for photo aesthetic as well. People will throw a load of light leaks into their images in the lab or make it a crazy over-saturated color or blow it out. If you take that away, what is left in the photograph? Is the subject matter, form or composure there or are you relying entirely on the filter effect? It's purely style over substance, and that can be cool, but not if you're unaware of the fact you're leaning on it because you've got nothing else to give, I guess.

Steph: There's this huge, household name fashion brand that commissioned a disabled artist last year to make these beautiful desserts and they got her to sign an NDA. They ghosted her for two weeks after some back and forth—including her creative process—and then they said they weren't going to commission her because of the “budget”. A few weeks later exact replicas of her work came out on their feed. I don't understand how these brands think they can get away with this kind of shit anymore. All is required nowadays is a single Instagram post from Diet Prada exposing where they slipped up, and they’re out. I love that enforced woke-ness. We don't give a fuck if you're huge and money’s coming out of your ass; if money is your incentive, then, take note: it's more profitable to be ethical, which is groundbreaking.

Mo: Everyone has an audience now so their public image is tailored towards what's associated with their... brand.

Steph: It's an interesting one because you can be self-aware to the point of obsession and paranoia, which a lot of people are. At the same time, people have never been so “woke” as they are now. It's cooler to be environmentally aware, politically engaged, and being accepting of all gender nonconformism. If you don't adhere to that then you're the loser, so the byproduct of huge self-awareness and cancel culture is interesting. It's taking a toll on the big brands whose foundation was kind of built on people not having insight behind the closed doors. 

Steph: It's not a survival of the fittest but survival of the wokest. [both laughing] People could say that it's almost ethically contrived but you have to think of the real outcome of it either way. If women or people of color are being given jobs over white men because it's cooler then that's fucking right, we’ve waited over three millennia. Give us all the jobs!

Mo: What I think about often is how layered the narratives we talk about are. I was at a comedy show recently and the comedian was talking about feminism and how the archetype of it is under the gaze of a white woman.

Steph: I posted an article about that recently. If you're a white feminist and you don't support women of color and take on a role as an ally then you're just as big of a hypocrite as anyone dismissing all women based on her sex. I completely agree.

Mo: Seeing the nuance of something is important, so I think that idea happens if you're attentive to certain movements.

Steph: We're at that phase of nuances already, aren't we? Recently, but not for everything, it's come to the stage of the fine print at the bottom of the document. Understanding the fine print is crucial to not letting someone fuck you over down the line. It’s all got to be watertight. Some people would say, “But it's going too far and we have to think too hard,” but there are fashion shoots where they're like, “Let's put her in this kimono.” And you're like, “No fucking way!” So they respond, “But we did it two years ago, it's fine.” That's not the point! It’s all or nothing. 

Steph: Nevertheless, excluding the former example obviously, you get to the stage where you wonder about policing art. At what point is it dangerous when art has a lot of parameters and boundaries that it shouldn’t dare cross? Art has to emote, so playing it so safely risks banality. Nevertheless, I think you can still be emotive, interesting and challenging without being culturally appropriative, racist, or a dick. They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s far more sexy and exciting if no one is being marginalized and hurt. It should lift people that need it.

Mo: One of the things that have been interesting to observe with you, is how you intersect your ideology of painting with your photography since you paint. I noticed that in how the subjects gestures bring volume to the narrative in the Labatut campaign.

Steph: It's a funny one because I liked those videos a lot. Since it was a campaign I couldn't go as far as I wanted to. Mabel was so cool with doing anything, so if I had been like, “Can you shit on this dead rabbit?” She'd have been like, “Sí”. To be honest, I would've totally loved that, but there are limits... [both laughing]

Mo: Those limits are necessary, right? They challenge you.

Steph: I think so. If it becomes so obscene then the conversation becomes too much about that and not the product, which is what they've worked their asses off for—this beautiful ethical leather brand using surplus offcuts from massive houses like Hermès. While shooting those photos, it made me realize the story that you have to put into your work. I think a lot of the time photographers just think, “What stories are hot right now?” And as a white female photographer, I couldn't do a shoot with a narrative based around black male culture. It can't be someone else's story you're telling. By doing that, you're stealing their chance to tell it themselves, and in an entirely authentically superior way. Give people their space. 

Steph: For me, for the last year or two, I've asked, “What story can I tell as a privileged white woman?” Since being single after a long term relationship, it's been really fun to find the taboos and limitations of sexuality and nudity. I'm not bothered about being naked all the time. It's just a tit! Only in the last few years, for some women, we've had the freedom to be sexy and as advertently nude as one wants to be. It’s fun to play with that and keep pushing until finding the extended, but still perceivable, limitation of what's “appropriate.” A couple of years ago I shot some photographs of breastfeeding and prenatal women whilst nude, abstractly or in less generic poses. What was interesting shooting those women was how sexy it was!

Steph: I was reading about how, when breastfeeding, the same hormones are released into the body as to when sexually aroused. I find it so interesting how pregnant women are the literal byproduct of sexualization but once a woman is pregnant, they are no longer seen as sexual objects. It's like, dude, you did this to them! This is what happens when you find someone so sexy you want to fuck them! So to suddenly de-cloak them of their sexiness in pregnancy seems so bizarre. Is it possibly because of the notion that “someone got there first”? Are men so primal that the evidential lack of virginity is such a turn-off? Men are weird. [both laughing]

Mo: For the person who wants to address these narratives in their work, how do they make it viable? And how have you made it viable within your career?

Steph: I think I don't do that very well [laughing]. Somehow, I shoot enough to live off. I'd love a brand to have the confidence in me and ask, “We love this, can you do this again for us?” after seeing some personal work. Often a photographer, including me, will get a sniff of the insane budgets that the compromise allows them, and takes the artistic hit. I'm sure I could make a hell of a lot more money if I shot more generic models in the studio, but it's something I don't want to get too sucked into that I can't see my own way out. I want to play the long game and stick it out. I’m happy so long as I can feed my two Pomeranians. 

Mo: Let's wrap this chat by explaining the purpose of your work.

Steph: I don't know why I do what I do. Maybe because, essentially, I'm lazy and painting takes too long and I like a more immediate turnaround of things. I'm not even kidding! I got fed up with the painful wait of three weeks, literally watching paint dry, all to add another layer and start the wait all over again. It turned out that photography was a much more viable career choice. 

Steph: Also, with photography, it's much easier for people to understand what you're trying to translate. The paintings I make are much more abstract. It's kind of a manifestation and physicalization of feeling whereas, with photography, if there's a body in it, people see that body and ask what that body is doing. So when it comes to communicating that, it's just faster and easier to grasp. And probably, as a result, it's much easier to forget. I need to remind myself that people like to be challenged and, after saying it’s allowed, I need to remind myself that I like to be, too. Maybe you've swayed me, Mo; maybe I should go back to painting. 

Steph: At the end of the day, as long as I'm making images, in whatever form, I hope those images contribute something, even if it is just a moment of joy, discomfort, arousal or distraction—just to give someone something to take away and ponder for a little while.