Fairytales: Petra Collins and Alexa Demie

Product Information

Curated by Petra Collins, featuring artists Arvida Bystrom, Harley Weir, Sandy Kim, Jeanette Hayes, Kristie Muller, and more. Forward by Tavi Gevinson. Discharge Since the early 2010s, Petra Collins has redefined the scene of photography and film with her ethereal, pastel-saturated visuals. Directing campaigns for high fashion brands such as Gucci and Bulgari, music videos for pop artists Olivia Rodrigo and Carly Rae Jepsen, and developing her first feature film (“ Spiral” starring Selena Gomez), Collins’ work has been publicly recognized in nearly every corner of the entertainment industry. I don’t think either of us has ever been comfortable in her immediate reality. Most of our childhoods were spent escaping in our minds,” Collins and Demie write in the prologue. As children, fairy tales played an important part for both of the women, allowing them escape from the dread of their own realities. The nine, nonlinear stories in “Fairy Tales” stem as much from their imaginations, as their traumas and the tales they told themselves.

Fairytales by Petra Collins, Alexandra Leigh Demie - Waterstones

Once upon a time, there was a subversive fashion photographer who released her book this week…oh, wait! That’s not an actual fairy tale—but Petra Collins’ visual tome certainly fits the bill. Created in collaboration with Euphoria star and muse Alexa Demie, Collins has just dropped “Fairy Tales,” her latest book in the form of nine erotic short stories based on works by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and more. Both women collaborated on the text and the visuals, which star Demie as various elves, mermaids, fairies, and other make-believe creatures in surrealist sets that blend reality and fantasy."—DAILY FRONT ROWCollins’s work models both mundane and fantastical environments, turning A-list celebrities, models, and musicians into characters of an original and personal narrative, with much of her work playing out like scenes from a film. Having worked with so many prominent figures in the public eye, a collaboration between Collins and actress/singer Alexa Demie was not a reach. Known for her breakout role as Maddy on HBO’s “ Euphoria ,” Demie, her performance, and her unreal beauty made her an overnight sensation in the realms of social media and Hollywood alike. With a shared love of and belief in magic between the two, a project this esoterically imaginative was absolutely fated for these artists. Petra Collins is a multi-talented artist and director whose photography set the stylistic tone for much of the 2010s. Shooting since the age of 15, her work is fueled by self-discovery and a contemporary femininity which explore the complex intersection of life as a young woman online and off. Collins weaves through the worlds of art, fashion, film, and music. She is currently working on her narrative feature debut set to shoot in 2021. Books 2021 Fairytales The first monograph by photographer Petra Collins presents the world of a thoroughly modern creative. 2015 Babe Fairy Tales is] acollaboration with the photographer Petra Collins -- a body of work that reimagines the female creatures who inhabit folk- and fairy-tales, who are often cast as one-dimensional monsters or temptresses. Their recent photo book "Fairy Tales" features Demie as nine different personas, including a faerie, siren, banshee and water sprite, as well as Hungarian legends like Tűz Anya (meaning'fire mother') that Collins grew up with. It explores the femininity and sexuality of mythological beings, but in the context of very human spaces, such as teenage bedrooms, medical facilities, parking lots and exotic dancing clubs."—CNN

Fairy Tales” - F Newsmagazine Book Review: “Fairy Tales” - F Newsmagazine

Upholding the undertones of classic fantasy literature, “ Fairy Tales” carries darker, erotic messages baked into its nine chapters, both subconciously and obviously. “Banshee,” a story following two sisters avoiding an encounter with a banshee, plays out like a glamorous urban legend told over a campfire. A unique approach to this kind of fiction, we see the aftermath of the subsequent encounter, resulting in the two sisters becoming physically one with this “long-tressed woman.” In the eighth chapter, “Water Sprite,” the “weird girl” in a college dormitory creates a safe haven in her room, while the exterior campus believes her self-imposed isolation to be something much more sinister. Fairy Tales” is a visual storybook of erotic short stories, starring Alexa Demie and shot by Petra Collins. The concept was written and brought to life by the two by creating characters and stories they wish were told to them. A modern, surreal update to classics such as those from Hans Christian Andersen, The Grimm Brothers, Charles Perrault, and more, these nine stories stand uniquely and irrepressibly on their own. Sensual in the way of its approach, “ Fairy Tales” allows an older, more mature audience to enjoy fantasy without the “adolescent” pejorative attached to the genre.

2017

Alexa Demie is an actor, musician and multi-hyphenate talent who currently stars as ‘Maddy’ in HBO’s EUPHORIA. She has starred in acclaimed A24 films and had successin creative direction and design projects. Alexa is currently working on her first EP, developing and producing film and TV, and engaged in social impact work focused on equality and representation, especially for the Latinx community and the next generation of youth. With the book’s Hungarian title Miért vagy te, ha lehetsz én is? Collins asks us: Why be you, when you can be me? Collins uses the camera as the third person. It captures historical truths (such as a time and place) and an emotional reality with a complicated relationship to intention and perception. Working with the sculptor Sarah Sitkin, Collins creates moulds of her body as well as her sisters to gain ownership, in a world where our bodies live in multiple realities. This new body of work features Collins first experiments with self-portraiture. 2019 OMG, I’m Being Killed