Sarah Piantadosi was just 16 when she put together her first photography project. Having found little inspiration in her isolated home town of Winnipeg, she decided to document the high school culture around her, from people partying and taking drugs to queer couples making out. But when she submitted the photos for an assignment, her tutors refused to mark it. “I wrote an article in my school newspaper about it,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t take a photo of two guys or girls kissing?’”
Piantadosi, now 39, has been drawn to transgressive photography ever since, from the crude explorations of gender and family by Diana Thorneycroft to the erotic depictions of New York’s underground gay community by Robert Mapplethorpe (who she acknowledges is problematic). “I realised you could make strong subversive statements with photography,” she says. “I found it exciting and appealing.”
After moving to London in 2007, Piantadosi began to pursue photography as a career, building up a formidable portfolio with clients including Dior, Calvin Klein and Alexander McQueen. Yet, despite her extensive CV and her interest in bold pictures, the prospect of shooting nude portraits made her feel uncomfortable.
“There’s this cliche,” she says, “of the male photographer and the young female model and the, ‘Oh, let’s go over to my house and we’ll take pictures’ where all sorts of gross shit goes down.” In the early days, she worked as a lighting assistant and remembers seeing condoms falling out of photographers’ camera bags. “And then when #MeToo came along and all the stories started coming out, you just know there’s a mountain of them. It’s so disturbing. I didn’t want to start in that place.”
But how could she take a more sensitive approach, respecting consent and boundaries? “I’d looked at other photographers’ nudes and thought there was a real intimacy there,” she says. “I was like: ‘Gosh, how do you achieve that?’”
Inspired by what she calls a “generational shift” at the start of the pandemic, she set out to photograph more than 50 twentysomethings in London and Paris over a year and a half, using the nude as a way to explore ideas of agency and empowerment. “I just felt that the generation younger than me were taking a stand in a way I hadn’t seen before,” she says. “They don’t want to be silenced. They want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want more autonomy. That’s super powerful.”
Bone, her first book, brings together the results in a full-frontal display of how young people engage with their bodies and boundaries. Some portraits are intimate and stripped back, with the subject curled up in a bed sheet or reclining on a rug; others have a more mystical quality, owing to Piantadosi’s experiments with lighting. The use of overexposure evokes auras and obscures body parts, allowing her to also play with concepts of self, gender and androgyny.
A black and white shot of Lilith, who is non-binary, is particularly striking: the stark contrast renders them featureless, save for their dark pubic hair, instead illuminating the outline of their figure as it locks into an exaggerated power pose. Elsewhere, an androgynous subject leans back Renaissance-style, but bathed in an iridescent sheen.
“When I started messing around with these techniques,” she says, “it was almost like capturing a different version of reality. I wanted to reveal the character within – or the aspirational fantasy of oneself. I questioned how I could make something that is meaningful to the subject as well.”
The portraits represent a broad cross-section of this younger generation, bringing together different genders, races and sizes, many of which have been shunned by mainstream media. Foregrounding these demographics is a rare luxury Piantadosi attributes to her working independently. “You’re making work on your own terms,” she says. “You’re able to express things that maybe you can’t in commercial and editorial photography.”
Most of the subjects – a term she insists on instead of “models” – are working musicians, writers and artists. “I didn’t want to just photograph a bunch of models from an agency or from the runway. I was more interested in street casting and capturing this generation working within culture. As a society, we really need that. We need to see variety to feel normal and healthy in ourselves.”
In an attempt to confront photography’s history of exploitation, Piantadosi worked with a casting director and preceded each sitting with a 30-minute chat over a cup of tea. “I think these extra steps are so important,” she says, “because there is a power dynamic when you’re a photographer, especially if you’re photographing somebody young and inexperienced. They might want to make you happy and give you what you’re asking for. It’s important that the boundaries be discussed beforehand.”
Piantadosi’s slow and considered approach also carved space for experimentation and collaboration. Sometimes, she worked on a set with a team of stylists and designers. Other times, the shoots took place one-on-one in her home. Often, she encouraged the subjects to bring along a personal item, a piece of jewellery, say, or a pair of gloves, to add a new dynamic.
In one especially cinematic portrait, a subject stands against a sleazy backdrop of car headlights, wearing just a pair of fishnet tights. Elsewhere, another poses with their hands on their hips as they glance steadily down at the camera, one cowboy boot suspended in the air.
Shooting in digital meant Piantadosi could tether her camera to a screen that she and her subjects could see, allowing them to exchange ideas or concerns. In some cases, she organised reshoots to try out new concepts or track an “evolving story”. She laughs. “I’m making it sound like the photos are saccharine or corny, but I don’t think they are. Just because you have this approach of empathy doesn’t mean you can’t still take a real sexy, devilish and subversive photograph.”
It felt exciting, Piantadosi says, to capture the cultural shift she had witnessed. “We’ve never had these conversations so intensely, or had such a demand for these conversations to be in the mainstream. I think now people are angry, they want to speak out and they should. Why should all the power be in the hands of rich white guys?”
But with so much political uncertainty, she’s intrigued to see how the book will age. “Will the conversation have progressed further and the book will seem like a relic?” she muses. “Or will things have regressed and we’ll look back to a time when we were freer?”
Producing Bone meant a lot to Piantadosi, professionally and personally. But what she really values is the responses from her subjects. “I just hope they can look at the book and be proud of their picture. I hope they can look back at it when they’re 80 and be like, ‘Oh my God, I had the guts to do that.’”
Bone is out now via Sarah Piantadosi’s website.
