 
                        
                        
        Sarah Moon French, b. 1941
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Paper: 72 x 56 cm / 28 3/8 x 22 in
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Sarah Moon's "Fashion 07, Stockings" (1997) transcends conventional fashion photography, existing in the liminal space between dream and documentation. This rare carbon print—edition 13/15 from a sold-out collection—exemplifies Moon's revolutionary vision at its artistic apex.
The carbon printing process becomes integral to the image's ethereal quality. Unlike silver gelatin prints, carbon prints achieve luminous depth through pigmented gelatin layers that create tangible relief across the paper's surface. This physical topography transforms shadows into sculptural voids while highlights transition with painterly delicacy, producing the saturated yet muted tones defining Moon's dreamlike aesthetic.
Moon's signature blur and double-exposure effects, achieved through intuitive long exposures and camera movement, create what she describes as "the movement of the wind." This deliberate imperfection becomes a philosophical statement—an embrace of accident that gives the image remarkable fragility and humanity. The tactile grain feels like breath on glass, drawing viewers into her private universe.
The mysterious stockings emerge from Moon's visual language of suggestion over revelation. Her aesthetic philosophy—"photography is pure fiction"—transforms mundane hosiery into symbols of timeless femininity. The subject exists in Moon's "fairy world" where conventional fashion codes are completely reimagined, suspended between past and present.
Dating from Moon's mature period following her 1985 transition from commercial work, this piece embodies her lifelong exploration of memory and transience. Her heroines exist without urgency, in perpetual waiting, possessing rare autonomy in fashion imagery.
"Fashion 07, Stockings" represents not mere documentation but a meditation on beauty's ephemeral nature, crystallizing decades of artistic evolution into a single, haunting masterwork that has established Sarah Moon as one of contemporary photography's most distinctive voices.
