Sarah Moon: 10 Portland Road
“Why should there be only one sort of photography? I want to create images with elements of my choosing, narrative or evocative... I give myself a literary frame, I tell a story.”
— Sarah Moon
Michael Hoppen is pleased to present its fifth solo exhibition of work by the inimitable Sarah Moon, marking over thirty years of collaboration. The exhibition brings together a selection of new colour and black-and-white photographs from 2003 to the present.
A key figure in the history of female photography, Sarah Moon first established her career as a model in the 1960s before moving behind the camera in the early 1970s. She developed her distinctive visual language that challenged the conventions of fashion photography, introducing a poetic and narrative sensibility that has influenced generations of image-makers. Her work is instantly recognisable: poetic, elusive, and deeply narrative.
Moon is, above all, a storyteller. Her photographs unfold like fragments of memory, suspended between dream and disappearance. Whether working in fashion, the natural world, or architecture her images resist the literal and invite interpretation. This can be clearly seen in recent work created in dialogue with Dior and her major three-volume retrospective published by Delpire & Co in 2022.
Working in both colour and black and white, Moon is recognised for her soft-focus aesthetic, muted tonal range, and carefully controlled printing process. Her attention to the final print remains central to her practice, resulting in photographs distinguished by their depth, subtlety, and material quality.
This exhibition affirms Sarah Moon’s position as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in photographic history.
