This is one of my favourite works that I have created. I worked in collaboration with the stylist Nozomi Sasaki to create a series that showcased both our stylistic ideas. One half of this collaboration was shot in Nozomi’s home of Osaka, and the other half was shot in my home of Melbourne. Sharing our home cities while creating art ended up bringing us together to create a work that reflects both of us in new ways.

Nozomi has a signature style of Ballet-core, we used this as the base theme of the collaboration. The first of two shoots (with the model in pink) explored Ballet Core and Hime-Gyaru. Ballet-core is a style that is inspired by the warmup and class attire of ballerinas. This includes light pink tones and other pastel colours, with light airy fabrics and feminine silhouettes. Hime-Gyaru roughly translates to “princess gal”. This takes the Gyaru style of dark tans, big hair, and over-the-top makeup and makes it extra feminine and pink.

The concept for our second shoot (with the model in blue) was “off-duty ballet dance”, This idea was inspired by the darker side of ballet, and how that is depicted in movies like “Black Swan” (Dir. Aronofsky, 2010), and “Suspiria” (Dir. Argento, 2018).