Steph Wilson's photographs balance fashion, art and politics

The work of photographer Steph Wilson is perfect in its balance of fine art, politics and fashion. This London-based photographer has already completed work for Dazed, Vice, W Magazine and Mulberry, and has many exciting projects in the pipeline. Stephanie is also the founder of art collective, Lemon People, “an affinity of artists, writers, photographers, filmmakers and musicians.” And she has a parrot called Tomato who often makes an appearance in her work.

One stand out project is Emoji a series she completed for Dazed, which discusses whether censorship on social media has gone too far. The series artistically directs the subject using emojis for their “aesthetic appeal along with their frequency used to censor nudes.” The difficulty of censorship rules on Instagram, a platform predominately used by creatives to showcase work, is summed up by Stephanie: “It’s a tricky one as I understand that it’s a 12 rated app. What I don’t understand is why a 12 year old can’t be exposed to a nude woman’s nipples shot in an artistic, empowering manner, but can be exposed on a daily basis to a woman’s semi-nude body used for marketing purposes. It just makes ‘real’ nipples terrifying and normalises the air-brushed sexualised form of advertised bodies. I don’t get it. What if we don’t want to sell something with our tits? Can we not just have them out because, you know, they’re just tits?”

Steph’s eye for invigorating colour combinations and ability to visualise topical content is rare from such a young photographer, and while visiting her studio she gave us a sneak peek of a new project she’s been working on. The series has been created for Japanese brand Honey Mi Honey and captures “innocently erotic” French singer Petite Meller.

Steph explains more about the shoot and working with the singer: “She likes to boss me about a bit which I kind of love. We also get on really well and talked about the ethos of her work and mental health conditions which we both find fascinating as a topic. She’s a clever nymph.” Petite’s enigmatic personality is enhanced by the impressive setting Steph’s captured her in, which turns out to be the photographer’s mum’s house in Farnham, “We turned up and quite sporadically made use of the house and surrounding area. I grew up there so obviously knew it like the back of my hand. Mum always insists on over-feeding us and she managed to collect 15 dogs from town for the day of the shoot.”