The book Future Perfect is a collection of portraits of prepubescent models photographed by Zosia Prominska. Staged carefully within the intimate confines of their bedrooms and surrounded by the small details reflecting their teenage or even childish happenstance, they are styled in the latest collections of Poland’s best designers to resemble the models they themselves dream to become. Early contracts with professional model agencies create hope and drive expectations even before they turn of working age. However, not all will develop into the criteria set by the fashion world. What impact does this have on these individuals and potentially at what cost?
Zosia Prominska approaches the subject matter for very personal reasons. The artist herself is a former model and knows too well the demands of the fashion industry and how the pressures of fitting into specific criteria can influence the life of a teenager.
Zosia Prominska (b. 1985 in Poznán, Poland) is a visual artist, photographer. At the age of 15 she started her sixteen year long career as an international fashion model. She later studied eth- nolinguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University as well as photog- raphy at the Fort Institute of Photography in Warsaw. Promínska’s work has been published in magazines such as Vogue, i-D, Harper’s Bazaar, and L’Officiel. She lives and works between Zurich and Portugal where her studio is located.
Danaé Panchaud is a museologist, curator and lecturer special- ising in photography, based in Switzerland. She is currently the director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart, in Biel.
“By interconnecting contradicting or ambivalent elements in a deceptively simple protocol, Zosia Promińska’sportraits succeed in inspiring reflections about the fashion industry and its aspiring actors. She achieves this in a process that remains very respectful of her models – a major concern for an author acutely aware of the instrumentalization and exploitation so common in this field – and which manages to let them assert agency over their own image, while assuming the ethical responsibility that comes with photographing very young people. She plays with the discomfort she provokes in the spectator without making it feel gratuitous or meaningless, but rather using it fruitfully to confront us with our own fascinations for youth, beauty, andluxury, and its poten- tial consequences for those working in the fashion industry. Aris- ing from the images is also a profound kindness for the pho- tographed individuals, stemming from the author’s similar experience and her genuine sense of care about them, which she passes on to us – and this is possibly the most significant achieve- ment of this body of work.”
From the essay Indecisive Promises at Dawn by Danaé Panchaud
Zosia Promińska : Future Perfect
Text by Danaé Panchaud
Designed by Gosia Stolinska Hardcover
19,5 x 24,5 cm
120 pages 75 color ills. English
ISBN 978-3-96900-006-9
Euro 30,00 / US$ 46.00
