Brilliantly merging painterly abstraction with bold punctuations of saturated color and subtle movement, Sarah Moon’s photographs are unlike anything else within the realm of fashion photography. The dreamlike scenes that she creates are entirely of her own imagining; like stills taken from a film that was never made. She explains, “I start from nothing. I make up a story which is left untold. I imagine a situation which doesn’t exist. I wipe out a space to invent another. I shift the light, I render everything unreal and then I try. I watch out for what I didn’t expect. I wait to see what I can’t remember. I undo what I put together. I hope for hazard but more than anything I long to be struck as I shoot.” This layered process of creating and undoing, of controlling and letting go, results in photographs that hover somewhere between reality and fiction, at once timelessly classic yet cutting-edge contemporary.

Born in England, Moon began her career as a model but shifted to her role behind the camera in the late 1960s. She has worked for fashion giants Chanel, Dior and Comme des Garçons and her photographs have been published in Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie-Claire, among others. This image is from her 1996 collaboration with Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. While the majority of the work she has produced is in the 24 x 20 in. size, as seen in lots 1, 14 and 26, this is the first large-format print to appear at auction.