This was the project of a lifetime, one I will never forget, the freedom we had to make images, no constraints. We all took months away from work to make it happen. 100% love and passion, Justin Smith, Shane Sakkeus and I, at the time I was a freelance stylist, contributing to Vogue. Justin rented a flat on the beach in Perth, we decided to make a tome with all the amazing girls that had come from Perth, it was something in the water they said, the children of a lucky land born in the 80’s…
Previous issues of MARK had discovered Gemma Ward, from Perth, then all the other beauties too and they all appeared in this issue called FREAK. Tim Winton gave us a story to open it all, a local aerial photographer contributed incredible images of the land. It all come together pixel by pixel. It was an important time in photography. 2004. The digital age was born. Hassleblad gave us their first digital camera back to try out, loads of errors, cords didn’t work, downloading, files, images, Jpegs Tiffs, capture. Shane, our art director, new and eager, came to live in the seaside flat and experiment at retouching digital images and wow what we could do, liquify, stretch, add a sunrise, paint over an image, stretch a girl’s body, shape her nose, we went a bit crazy… The new age of digital fashion photography started here.
Photographed by Justin Smith, Art Director Shane Sakkeus.