Emma SummertonPhotographer

"The way we dress and present ourselves to the world is like putting your inside on the outside. We live in a material world.... I think it's good to embrace it rather then fight it."

"I grew up in Wollongong, Australia where there were a lot of surfies and sporties (which I was also at one time myself)It was suburban, and to look different was a difficult thing. ... I didn't really look at magazines. I was more into music: Blondie, Patti Smith, The Cure, and Depeche Mode. And Marilyn Monroe. ... I remember when I was sixteen, my look was kind of bleached blonde, Marilyn, 'punky.' ... I remember going to my end-of-school dance, in this black lace, neck-to-floor, semi-transparent number, my mom had made (under the demands of how it had to be from me). I remember turning up, and every one else was frothy, pink and white, and feeling kind of uncomfortable, but then thinking, 'Well, this is kind of who I am.' I think I brought that into my work. This idea of being allowed to just go for it, you know? ...

We live in a material world... I think it's good to embrace it rather then fight it. You can be anti-fashion within fashion by the way you mix things together, or buck the trends, create your own style. For me, it's always about feeling like myself.

Fashion photography to me, is always about the woman coming across as being beautiful and strong. To be self-empowered, even if she's being sexy, and to not be a victim. The woman of now can be fierce, a businesswoman, a lover, a fighter, a mother, and fashionable whatever that may be to her... it's about expressing all of that rather than the clothes. ...

One of the things I find when I'm shooting is that I never like to feel like I'm making someone do something they're not comfortable with. I always like to feel like they're on board.... It's about inviting them to play this role, and supporting them in it. ...

The reason I started doing self-portrait pictures on Polaroid was I needed to find my voice.... They were love letters to an ex-boyfriend as well. The reason there was a freeness, wildness to the pictures was because I never felt like I had to show them to anybody. They were totally personal; they were for him, they were for me. ...

Hector Castro, who was at Dazed and Confused, asked me to do a story for Dazed and Confused about Stefano Pilati’s first collection for Yves Saint Laurent after seeing the lookbooks I shot for Terry de Havilland. It was the first time I had shot self-portraits for a magazine with a stylist. Stefano [Pilati] saw them, loved them, and has prints of the whole story. Next thing, I'm having a meeting with him in Paris in his office, and he's got them framed on the wall.

Over the years I've learnt so much from [Edward Enninful]; it's impossible to even explain how much. ... Edward taught me to step back and look at my work, to be self-critical, and never settle for anything less than what you know it could be. And to look at it, not totally with my own desires, I guess, but with a broader vision of what works and what doesn't. He pushes you, never kind of going, 'Well, okay, that'll do it.'" -- Emma Summerton to Shop Ghost

Emma Summerton photographed at the Bowery Hotel in New York by Stevie Dance.