Fairytales: Petra Collins and Alexa Demie

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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. The first monograph by photographer Petra Collins presents the world of a thoroughly modern creative. 2015 Babe

Alexa Demie and Petra Collins reimagine the mythical female beings of folk- and fairy-tales. Petra Collins/Rizzoli 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. I lived in two different worlds: our world, and then a full other fantasy world,” Collins tells me from her bedroom in Los Angeles over Zoom on a recent afternoon. “It was the best way of disassociating—making these beautiful worlds.” 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. Below, Collins gives five recommendations for coming-of-age and romantic tales tinged with fantastical elements.Each of the nine tales are set in unique spaces, ranging from suburban homes and parking lots to fantastical sets. Petra and Alexa’s chapters of elves, mermaids, sirens, water sprites, fallen angels, fairies, witches, and banshees blend their own stories with retold fairy tales. The photos combine elements of camp, prosthetics, and shibari in a surreal update to the imagery of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Perrault, and others. 2020 Miért vagy te, ha lehetsz én is? Collins found resonance with this novel about an outcast girl who believes she’s a mermaid after she finished reading “The Pisces.” “It ruined me. It was a scary accurate depiction of coming of age,” she said. “The main character flutters between what is real and what isn’t – and it’s what I did with ‘Fairy Tales.’”

Throughout the series, the personas each contend with a conflicted sense of self, recalling the film portraits that made Collins a defining voice of girlhood in the 2010s, as well as her recent music videos for pop star Olivia Rodrigo. We’re living in such an absurd time,” she said. “We’re all using these filters. We’re all editing our photos in these crazy ways. So it made the most sense in the way that we would tell what was happening in our time…(We’re) presenting these false…fairy-tale versions of ourselves.”The latter character is labeled in the book as a “viz tunder”—the Hungarian name for this particular kind of sprite. Collins was raised on a diet of Hungarian folktales: stories that she describes as “super psychedelic, so sexual, and violent.” She points to one tale in which a girl trades her body for goats, then raises her skirt to reveal a blinding light as a euphemism for her vagina. “This is seared into my memory, and I didn’t realize it was such a big reference until years and years later,” Collins says. Collins calls this novel about a woman who rebounds from a relationship with a merman one of her “favorite books ever.” She explained: “It is a beautiful depiction of addiction, mental health, love and loss – all told through the lens of a woman in love with a merman.”

Curated by Petra Collins, featuring artists Arvida Bystrom, Harley Weir, Sandy Kim, Jeanette Hayes, Kristie Muller, and more. Forward by Tavi Gevinson. Discharge Each of the nine tales are set in unique spaces, ranging from suburban homes and parking lots to fantastical sets. Petra and Alexa’s chapters of elves, mermaids, sirens, water sprites, fallen angels, fairies, witches, and banshees blend their own stories with retold fairy tales. The photos combine elements of camp, prosthetics, and shibari in a surreal update to the imagery of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Perrault, and others.Collins’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 Aesthetically, Collins’ images have been variously but consistently described as dream-like and feminine, making her fixation on fantasy — and the fever dream that is girlhood — fitting. But in a bit of a plot twist, she says she’s long been inspired by coming-of-age, body horror movies, like The Exorcistand Carrie.She also loves the work of fellow Canadian David Cronenberg.

In a world where filters give us solace, OMG! I’m being killed, is the baby that was birthed in response to 2019. This book is Petra’s ultimate fashion magazine – one that she feels is a good representation of the truth about the age we live in. Filled with unpublished editorials and new works this book offers horrendously satisfying images. 2018 SIX BY XX The way that I learned everything in art was through collaboration. So whenever I have a subject, I approach it as a really exciting collaboration…I’m like, ‘What do you want to feel like? Or what do you want to possess? What image do you want to put out?’” she says, adding: “I think the whole thing with shooting subjects, celebrities, and talent is that you really want their input. And then you also want to bring something new to them too.” Fairy Tales is an erotic folklore of short stories shot by Petra Collins starring Alexa Demie. The pair created the concept and text collaboratively. Alexa portrays nine characters that embody new stories they would have liked to see. As children, Petra and Alexa were both enamored with fairy tales, which provided an escape from their own painful realities. They were so psychedelic, violent, but also beautiful,” Collins tells AnOther. “I was looking at work made from a collective trauma during the Soviet regime and digesting that as a child, but also experiencing my own trauma at the same time. As a child, I struggled with reading and writing in school, and the way I related to the world was by making work or dancing, creating any type of art. I lived in different realities as I think most artists do. Half of it was disassociating and half was a way of properly experiencing the world.” 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.I think a lot of those folktales or the storytelling comes from all of the pain of what our country went through, especially under the Soviet regime,” she said. “They’re super psychedelic…and sort of like, violent,” she added, recalling an illustrated tale where a girl sells her body for goats. “I definitely felt like the darkness in these stories.” Playing pretend is by no means a novel aspect of childhood—but Collins has taken that ethos and made a buzzy career out of it. In just seven years, the Toronto native has established her own uniquely hazy, female-gaze-centric aesthetic; become both muse and protégé to photographer Ryan McGinley; shot countless magazine covers; hosted exhibitions at MoMA and Art Basel, and directed short films and music videos for the likes of Cardi B and Olivia Rodrigo. (Her Good 4 U music video for the 18-year-old singer was most recently nominated for a Grammy—Rodrigo FaceTimed Collins during this very interview to congratulate her.) Fairy Tales is an erotic folklore of short stories shot by Petra Collins starring Alexa Demie. The pair created the concept and text collaboratively. Alexa portrays nine characters that embody new stories they would have liked to see. As children, Petra and Alexa were both enamored with fairy tales, which provided an escape from their own painful realities. For Collins, "Fairy Tales" also speaks to the ways in which our online lives have changed us. "(We're) presenting these false...fairy-tale versions of ourselves," she said. Petra Collins/Rizzoli This horror musical directed by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska “is so fun, sexy, dark and perverse,” Collins said. “This is one of my favorite (films), about two siren sisters who get pulled into the dark world of humans.”