Surreal photos that celebrate the joy of self expression

Embodying the existentialist dread that has come to define him, Jean-Paul Sartre once declared the immortal line, “Hell is other people”. While the photographer Eva Stibbe Nunney can empathise with Sartre’s sentiment and agrees that the watchful gaze of the ‘other’ inevitably alters how we present and dress ourselves, she refutes the notion that this performance is merely a bid for attention. In her latest photography series and exhibition, Heaven is Other People, Nunney turns Sartre’s phrasing on its head, devoting her lens to celebrating this very staging of the self.

“I’ve grown up with a love for dressing up, but when I got to secondary school and met some incredible friends that shared my love for experimenting with style, it became an obsession,” Nunney tells Dazed of her nascent exploration of identity through fashion. “Starting with a new piece of makeup, an ugly dress from a charity shop, or a roll of ‘fragile’ tape from Poundland, we’d create these ephemeral characters and immortalise them on the camera I got for Christmas.”

The young artist was soon introduced to the work of artists and performers such as Leigh Bowery, who legitimised Nunney’s own explorations with self-portraiture and reinvention. “I was mesmerised by his flamboyant, iconic club personas but what really stuck with me was how he presented himself in his day-to-day life,” she tells Dazed. “He would wear cheap wigs, change his face with tape and subtle makeup, and transform into ordinary characters that would make you look twice if you passed them in the street. It reassured me that fashioning oneself isn’t bound to vanity or seeking attention but an artistic practice that uses the body as a medium.”

“I’ve grown up with a love for dressing up, but when I got to secondary school and met some incredible friends that shared my love for experimenting with style, it became an obsession” – Eva Stibbe Nunney

In Heaven is Other People, Nunney’s subjects – some covered in saturated reds with Adidas’s signature white stripes cascading down their form, while another is dressed in a faux-muscle t-shirt, holding a golden Tuba or draped in a sari – are an extension of this ethos where the act of dressing up is one rooted in performance and honouring individuality. instead of traditional models, the photographer opted to cast people from her personal life, friends from her time at Central Saint Martins, people she bumped into at pubs or out dancing and those she met on dating apps. Nunney encouraged them to participate in the styling process and contribute their voices to the project. She explains, ”This idea of staging the self is central to this project, so it became crucial to collaborate with models and experiment with the tenets of their personality through clothes, flaunting it and hiding it in equal measure.

In one image, Victoria, who would typically wear Wellington boots and a waterproof jacket, is captured tending to her sheep in a wintry meadow under the grey, stormy sky in a theatrical red gown (by designer Yashana Malhotra). “We made this choice to showcase the grandeur of her work and to encapsulate the pride she has in herself and her labour,” Nunney explains, referencing how she uses juxtaposition to emphasise aspects of her subject’s identity. “In another portrait, I was inspired by Lady Godiva, the Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who was riding a horse naked in protest of the taxes her husband had imposed on his poor tenants, and styled my model solely with hair extensions adorned with tiny bows that fell all the way to the floor. And a merkin to match, with a clunky bag and pink heels to emphasise her nudity.”

While the photographs in this series often call upon historical figures or fictional characters that are mischievous, courageous and anti-establishment, to Nunney, these images are not about creating alter egos or paying homage. Rather, her work is rooted in the politics of acceptance amid societal demands to conform and the myriad ways our bodies and, by extension, our interior lives could be clothed and staged to the world. 

Heaven is Other People will be running at Sam’s Cafe in Primrose Hill for two months from February 9 2024 onwards.