Is the relationship between model and photographer equal?
No. I think mostly it’s not an equal relationship. That’s partly why I’ve been trying to do with this, by trying to get Liberty to generate her own imagery and by giving her platform from which she can voice her opinions throughout a shoot. Liberty’s not participating in the end image in Vogue. For this project, she’s made video clips over the past two months of how she sees herself, so the audience has been watching those and getting to know her through the generation of her own images, they’ve been discovering her as a person. She’s been answering their questions. She’s been showing visions of herself. I think for the large part models haven’t had much control. They do have a bit more now but not a lot. Even in the day of the supermodel, ultimately they controlled their fees and when they would turn up but still as a photographer, you’re a director, you issue a set of instructions. A good model will interpret those instructions and push them back towards you so it becomes like game.
