A look inside Fashion Photographer Annabelle Tiaffay, Graphic and Minimalist World
Parisian fashion photographer Annabelle Tiaffay blends the worlds of magazine editorial with modern art sentiment. She has photographed for the likes of Jeremy Scott, Dealer de Luxe, Weston, Cotélac and Michel Perry. In a Creative Mapping collaboration, pop-singer and Mapper Buster Sliimy had some funky sass photographs taken by Annabelle Tiaffay for a spread in VS magazine. Creative Mapping met up with the French photographer to find out more about her fashionable photographs and personal work. A graphic black and white editorial which appears to be composed of shadows and lights and set against a stormy sky; a color saturated, hyper-real image of a wild haired model lost in a wheat field, candy colored portraits accented by pastel makeup and jewels; a rockn’roll fashion editorial set against the geometric backdrop of a construction site. Thanks to a distortion of lighting, makeup, and clothes, Annabelle’s photographs create a unique representation of a beauty which melds gender into the androgynous; mixes skin colors into the indiscernible; animal with human; and art with reality.
“The base is the light in my pictures. The light is the most important thing in any kind of picture and any style.” Annabelle Tiaffay
While her fashion photography has set the course for her admired editorial career, it is Annabelle’s personal work that truly reveals her artist’s eye. Her series of haunting landscape shots which she entitles “Strange Lands” and minimalist photographs of architecture and industrial design details call to mind the perspective twisting work of Constructivist photographers of the 1920’s Avant-Garde.
Annabelle Tiaffay’s work is as diverse as her portfolio yet her Creative DNA is unified by an eye for beauty, movement, and capturing her subjects at that perfect instant to create edgy and dynamic editorials. She creates visually stunning tableaus that could only be dreamed up by the imaginative eye of someone who can see beyond the camera lens.
CM: Why Photography?
When I began with fashion photography and I didn’t know you could make money with this job. I had no idea. I studied literature and then after my studies I met a professional Jean-Jacques Bugat who is an amazing photographer and much older and he taught me about photography.
CM: How challenging is it to shoot with film?
It’s very different because you can’t make mistakes. You have to be much more precise at the beginning and when you are learning you can not see what you are shooting. Now you can shoot and shoot and shoot and then spend hours choosing the picture.
CM: Tell us about your style?
What people say about my pictures, they always speak about a graphic and minimalist style. I like this minimalism, and I try as much as possible to go to some abstraction. Of course with fashion I can’t go as much into abstraction. But I like to keep a picture minimal and graphic.
CM: Do you place much importance on light?
The base is the light in my pictures. The light is the most important thing in any kind of picture and any style.
CM: What are your biggest challenges?
I wish I could have some exhibitions of me work which I haven’t done much of yet. A place or gallery where I could show different parts of my work. Architecture, fashion, and global vision.
CM: Does Paris inspire you?
It’s difficult. For fashion and architecture it is of course the place. I have a problem with Paris because the town is quite stuck there are not many places where there is space or emptiness and I need some emptiness to feel the light and look.
Photography copyright: Annabelle Tiaffay, styling by Stephanie Vaillant.