Sarah Moon / On The Edge

It’s been about 12 years since we last had the pleasure of spending time in person with Sarah Moon in New York City and back then it was also on the occasion of a solo show at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in midtown Manhattan. On entering the gallery one weekday afternoon where Moon’s self-curated show, On The Edge, was installed ahead of its official opening, there was a pleasant buzz about the place. Gallery staff were busy at work. Several people were taking in the show (journalists, fans, journalist-fans more likely). Moon was parked at the gallery entrance discussing her favorite picture, a small photograph of a hooded cape by Dior, the garment an abstract sooty smudge against a white background.

A few days later, at the official opening, the gallery was jam packed with admirers, Moon’s friends, and fellow photographers, a festive flock around her, waiting patiently to have books signed, to say hello, to talk craft. And some just to get close to — Moon would wave off the description with a flick of her American Spirit cigarette — a photographic luminary. I had originally written “fashion” luminary (she is that too) but when I approach one of Moon’s “fashion” photographs, all giddy to see her depiction of say a Yohji Yamamoto dress (Pour Yohji Yamamoto, 2019), I’m inevitably distracted by, because drawn into, the physicality of the print, the eye pin-balling around its active surface, lingering at the silvery, watery edges.

Moon’s photos are deceptive. You think you know what you are seeing and how the image works. You’re typically proven wrong. For example, there is a photograph (Dior Maria Grazia Chiuri, n.d.) that at first just seems to be an attractive and dreamy composition of shades and shades of grey depicting, the model heading off the frame, her Dior gown flowing behind her. But on closer inspection you realize the dress looks like it’s been drawn using a fine pencil, while the model’s metallic headpiece looks as if silver-leafed on the paper and you stand there and think, how the hell does she do it. “Grasping light before it vanishes,” as Moon’s wall text puts it. 

Moon is nothing if not consistent, in the best sense of the term, relentlessly pursuing her vision (grasping, looking, echoing, trying, cropping, reducing; all her verbs) across the gallery’s walls over the course of 30 photographs, from the late 1980s to 2022. Best of luck guessing which ones are from when. I typically flinch at the overblown size of contemporary artworks but Moon’s decisions as to scale are justified. There is one large print in the show, Amaryllis, 2012, at 78 5/8 x 59 inches, and it makes sense given how painterly it is. The gem of the show on the other hand may just be the modest, framed color polaroid installed by itself on a column, the model perfectly captured, the colors of the clothes popping, all the Moon signatures in place, all in 4 x 3 glorious inches.

Speaking of consistent, there was a symmetry to our second meeting, which also began with Moon lighting a cigarette. Whereas twelve years ago we trooped down to a bench on West Broadway outside the Soho Grand, this time we commandeered one of the gallery’s viewing rooms, cracked a window and pulled up chairs as Moon slowly smoked, cocooned in an ankle-length black Prada puffer and a black leather beret. 

And, just like twelve years ago, Moon started talking in her gentle yet steely way, and before I knew it she somehow swept all the literal and metaphorical noise of the day away, boiling it all down to doing one’s work well and with dignity, the pleasures of meeting with friends, taking walks, reading, writing letters, and visiting museums.

She started by saying she likes to come to New York City as much to see friends as for the shows and that, as she put it, “I have time, I have nothing to do, I haven’t got the pressure I have in Paris.”

“I went to the museum,” she continued. Her answer when I asked which museum she had visited was classic Moon. A bit startling at first but then it made perfect sense as she went on. The American Museum of Natural History. “I always go. It’s a dream.”

“The way they do it, the drawing, the painting, the light — bit strong but, you know, I can manage — it’s another world. I always go and look at the dioramas, wherever I am. Always to the science museum, because something in animals that are, how can I say?” She paused. “Taxidermy. I think there is a same thing, no there is a link, not the same thing, between a taxidermist who stuffs animals and a photographer who stuffs souvenirs. The way they think to keep them alive. And sometimes they don’t keep them alive exactly as they were but there is something in the remembering which is lovely. When I read ‘memories and desire,’” a phrase we used in the title of our 2012 profile of Moon, “I say OK I haven’t changed. I could say it again. Salinger’s story. He knew.“ 

When I asked Moon if it has gotten easier to capture the images she seeks she said, “No, I need more time.” She elaborated, “It’s the pressure and probably the fact of the fame overlaps on you and other parts that I don’t identify with but I respond to because I live off my work. It’s because I work that I can do my films.” (a short she did of an Alaia couture show available at https://fondationazzedinealaia.org/en/films/a-comme-alaia/). She drove on, “At the end of everything, it’s all about friendship and work. Work takes you away and friendship reminds you of who you are. And there is giving and receiving, which is completely different. Some day you know that you give more and you receive more. So, that’s the story.”

The demands on her time and energy when she is home in Paris include carrying on the legacy of her husband, the pioneering publisher and champion of photography, Robert Delpire, mounting museum shows and working with foundations to preserve her work. Moon made it clear that “I say no to a lot of things but when it’s new and interesting, I want to see what I see. It’s always that same story. You have that curiosity and as long as you have it you want to go on, which is crazy, but at the same time it’s a drive, it keeps you going. So the day I won’t be able to do it anymore, well…,” she trailed off and then picked up again, “You know some people do — I mean somebody like Duane Michals,” the esteemed American photographer who came to Moon’s opening, dapper in candy colors and a striped scarf, “who is 93, I think, is so productive. His mind is like sparkles. Mary Frank, who was the wife of Robert, is a painter with an extraordinary body of work. She still works. And being with her and seeing her work, she was drawing when we went together to the museum, that’s what I’m interested in,” she said. “How do people survive. When you love somebody, you always want to know more.” 

As for the selection she made for the her current show Moon explained, “It’s that thing that I’ve learned that when you put two photos together, in one’s imagination it makes a third. It’s like editing a film. You see somebody. And now I can see how fashion relates with all the rest I’ve always done. Because I do a harbor or a garden and suddenly… I do the peacock for instance and there is that women looking, just in her dream. You can’t rationalize it. So I can’t say, really, what makes me link photos together but I know it’s right when it communicates.” 

“You know it’s like, how can you say… actually, I quote Beckett because he helps,” Moon says, not batting an eyelash. “Beckett says, ‘Saying that without knowing what.’ That’s the best explanation for those groups. You can’t rationalize. It’s pure. It’s very personal. It’s a got a meaning. I don’t know exactly which one. But it seems normal. And if I present myself, then I present myself to the public,” Moon paused. And then she piped up, “I can’t have too much. It’s NÉGLIGÉ, in fashion terms.” She looked at me. “NÉGLIGÉ is like ‘Oh, well, forget it.’ But I don’t think you can forget it.” She smiled. “I’m sure you understand.”  

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Sarah Moon / On the Edge at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, now until April 6, 2024

All images are ©Sarah Moon, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York