The House of Photography at Hamburg's Deichtorhallen is presenting the first comprehensive retrospective of French photographer Sarah Moon's work, on view through February 21, 2016. The exhibition features approximately 350 photographs alongside five films, offering visitors an immersive journey into Moon's distinctive artistic universe. This landmark show, which opened November 27, 2015, represents the first time the photographer's complete body of work has been assembled for public viewing. Curators Ingo Taubhorn and Brigitte Woischnik have organized the exhibition to showcase the full range of Moon's creative output spanning several decades.
Born in 1941, Sarah Moon grew up between England and France, developing a multicultural perspective that would later influence her artistic vision. Before picking up a camera, she worked as a fashion model in Paris for several years, gaining intimate knowledge of the industry from the other side of the lens. In 1968, she made the pivotal decision to transition behind the camera, adopting the artistic name Sarah Moon. Her first major campaign for the fashion brand Cacharel launched her photography career, leading to prestigious commissions from luxury houses including Dior, Chanel, Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake, and Valentino, as well as editorial work for leading fashion magazines.
Moon's photographic style defies conventional sharpness and clarity, instead embracing blur, soft focus, and muted tones to create dreamlike, atmospheric images. The curators note that her work deliberately disturbs viewers, displacing them from orderly identity spaces into stretched time and the chaos of difference. Each image contains uncertain content where time and space become fluid and ambiguous. Visual structures are irregular and fragmented, with details, surfaces, and tones often dissolved into gray mist. This distinctive approach reflects Moon's pictorial and graphic imagination, giving her photographs the appearance of memories emerging or fading, hovering between presence and absence.
While Moon established herself as a sought-after fashion photographer, she consistently developed personal projects alongside her commercial assignments. She created numerous short films and documentaries, including intimate portraits of her close friends Henri Cartier-Bresson and Lilian Bassman, as well as the feature film "Mississipi One." These works demonstrate that Moon is far more than a fashion photographer; she is a multidisciplinary artist who has built a unique body of work in both photography and cinema over several decades. Her personal projects explore themes of dreams, myths, fairy tales, and paradise-like worlds of unknown landscapes and enchanted cities.
The exhibition's curators emphasize that Moon's recognizable style has profoundly influenced what is known as "atmosphere photography," inspiring generations of image-makers. Her fashion photographs, still lifes, and portraits appear as glimpses into timelessness, transcending their commercial origins to become fine art. The blurry black-and-white and pale-toned images transport viewers into a world where reality and fantasy intertwine. Moon's ability to capture ephemeral moments and emotional states rather than literal documentation has expanded the possibilities of photographic expression and challenged traditional notions of technical perfection.
Sarah Moon: Now and Then runs through February 21, 2016, at Deichtorhallen / House of Photography, located at Deichtorstr. 1-2, 20095 Hamburg, Germany. The exhibition provides a rare opportunity to experience the full scope of Moon's influential career in one location. For more information, visitors can contact the venue at Tel. 39 040- 32 10 30 or visit http://deichtorhallen.de. This retrospective not only celebrates Moon's individual achievements but also highlights the enduring power of photography to capture the intangible aspects of human experience and imagination.
