"I've been taking almost the same picture for 20 years. A fashion picture, a dress, a woman or rather a woman, a dress. Close up or full length, sitting, standing, inside outside, in the shade or in the light, summer or winter no matter.
I photograph privilege, illusion, evanescence, lightness and beauty. Then, I seek for an emotion. It seems an even more hopeless quest. I've often feared those who photograph life, I avoid it. I start from nothing. I make up a story that I've lived and told. I imagine a situation that doesn't exist. I wipe out a space to invent another. I shift the light, I rent everything unreal and I try. I watch out for what I didn't expect. I wait to see what I can't remember. I undo what I put together. I hope for hazard, but more than anything, I long to be struck as I shoot.
So, I walk around the model. I look at her endlessly. Face, profile, back, side, down and top to toe. I change the angles, I change the perspective. I falsify the trail. I don't know anymore, nothing but the emptiness around. As the model is only one place, I'm looking for mine. I can't find it. I need to be somewhere else. I keep on.
I hang on to shapes. The curve of the neck. The fold of the dress, gesture of the hand, the balance of the hips. The model moves slowly, she suggests. She tries to understand what I can't explain. She tries to play a part I can't follow. I hear myself say, "No, no...do nothing." So, again she waits. She stares at me, she sees my panic. I feel I'm letting her down. I feel guilty. I press a button, I see it's great. Yes. I pretend once, twice, 36 times. I hope and I begin again.
Time goes by. Light falls. I lose confidence. I don't want to be a photographer anymore. Then, all of a sudden, but not always, something changes. I can't say why, maybe I'm just in the right place at the right time. Or maybe I believe in it. However, for a split second, I see a sparkle of beauty passing by. Or is it simply the difference or the surprise? However, everything goes so quickly now within that stillness. And I'm carried away, and at last I like what I see and I can't stop finding it then losing it. And all day long, I keep on because it once existed.
On my contact sheets, I recognize second by second the fear, the burden, the labor, the absurdity, but sometimes a photograph is what they call an added value. A photo for me, a real photo, that instant of grace that I nearly missed and that might never happen again."
-Sarah Moon
"Even if I don't know yet exactly what it's about, there is a before and an after. The instant is there, it's all I need. And then it's so simple to photograph."
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