What if children ran the world? Photographer Vee Speers makes images in which these imagined moments become reality.
Speers, an Australian photographer living in Paris, has a mesmerizing collection titled, "The Birthday Party." The project began when Speers wanted to capture her daughter as a child, playing pretend. The photographer told the Guardian "I was imagining a world run by children, not adults –- an anarchic world threaded together by an imaginary party." The bare-bones minimalism in these portraits hints toward an even more lavish party going on in the children's mind.
There is a dark confrontation in some of the children's gazes, however, suggesting that the imaginary party is an escape from something else. The collection looks like a mixture between the work of Loretta Lux and Rineke Djikstra.
Speers' most recent collection "Immortal" features flawless, youthful nudes glowing amidst an apocalyptic Eden. The collection combines the contemporary obsession with youth with the loneliness and misery of living forever. Jim Casper said: "Speers has created a new world that merges Mona Lisa charm and mystery, with the melancholy of Dorian Gray, and the 3D cartoon poignancy of the movie Avatar."
Speers accesses the imaginary lands of both the young and the old creating visions of that tell us true stories about ourselves. Her works will show in a retrospective exhibition at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. The show will run until April 14.
Escape into the fantasies below. Do you think these photographs are playful, haunting or both? We want to hear!
