Lauren Luxemburg, In Power12 Images
In 2019, the photographer Lauren Luxemburg was on a boring date in east London, when the guy disappeared to the bathroom and she got chatting to someone else at the bar. That random stranger turned out to be the cinematographer Joshua Fry and, after showing him some of her photos, he told her that he loved her use of the midday sun. “I was like, what the hell are you talking about?” she says. But he persisted. “He was like, ‘You’re gonna be a director… trust me, I see your whole career plotted out for you.” Six years later, the prophecy proved true as Luxemburg put together a solo show not far from that fateful meeting place, with Fry serving as her mentor and director of photography.
This isn’t Luxemburg’s first rodeo, of course. For many years, she’s carved out a place in the world of commercial photography, working across music, fashion, portraiture, and documentary with the likes of Central Cee and Knucks. But her new series of works is different: more personal, and not mediated by anyone else’s creative vision or brief. “I looked at it as an opportunity to to create something without any limitation,” she tells Dazed. “Like, what is the aesthetic of my mind? It’s a dream world that I’ve always wanted to create. I’ve been thinking about [it] my whole career.”
As a starting point, she sat down for a conversation with the project’s creative director, Fin McAllister. “The truth is, I had a really difficult year last year,” she explains, “and I went through a lot of realisations and clarity.” Many of these were deeply personal, but also spoke to the shared experience of women across the world, which Luxemburg sums up as “the fragility of power” – a constant negotiation between empowerment and precarity.
McAllister’s role in this process was to act as a kind of sounding board or “mirror” for these reflections, he says. “Obviously the themes of the work are incredibly personal. Lauren is someone I know and love better than most people in the world, but even so…” Even the more general sentiments expressed in her artworks, he adds, are very specifically about womanhood. “So I was never here to provide an opinion on the content or themes. My job was to work alongside her and think about ways, whether abstract or physical, of bringing these themes and ideas to life.”
The result is In Power, a series of eight short films that explore the delicate power balance that recurs throughout Luxemburg’s own life, and other women’s lives as well. Shot across two days and produced by Only Child Collective, they span thorny subjects from fertility to childhood emotional neglect, and how that can manifest in adult behaviours. In one film, for example, a child is literally placed in the driver’s seat while her mum does her make-up. As Luxemburg explains: “She’s focusing on her vanity, and not realising that someone else is actually driving her life.”
To develop the fundamental ideas, Luxemburg drew on her experiences living between London and Medellin, Colombia, as well as introspective practices like meditation, ayahuasca ceremonies, and therapy. “[But] these are universal themes,” McAllister adds, “that will resonate with hopefully everyone that comes to see the work.”
There’s an uncanny nostalgia to the images, too, from the caged model surrounded by white bunnies (a symbol of fertility) to the bleach-blonde biker, which is only heightened via an ambient soundtrack by Baby Reindeer composer Nathan Coen and London jazz legend Mackwood. On April 24, a one-night-only exhibition of In Power at the Art House by Acrylicize will see Mackwood and his band expand this soundtrack into a two-hour epic, alongside DJ sets from Mala and Howe, and a closing performance by God Bless Chennessy. “It feels like music from another time,” Luxemburg says of the composition. “It feels quite otherworldly.”
The exhibition (curated by Lucas Gabellini-Fava with art direction by Ellie Beale) will also see elements from the photo studio spill out into a gallery space, immersing viewers in the artist’s personal world. The aim, she says, is to make people stop and confront parts of themselves that they might otherwise ignore, especially in an age where our attention is constantly sucked up by social media and its idealised images of other people’s lives. “If I can contribute one tiny moment where people stop and look at something, and think of something differently, then I’ve done my job,” she says. “I want to cut through the noise. I want to encourage people to look harder. The more you look, the more you see.”
Lauren Luxemburg’s In Power is on show at the Art House by Acrylicize for one night only, on April 24.
