If you want to work in photography, fashion is a logical first home. While this has its own conditions and limitations, every now and again, a photographer will bring their own unique sensibility to fashion imagery in a way that edges the genre into something wholly new and enthralling. One such photographer is Camille Vivier. In 1997, the year after she graduated from Central Saint Martins, Vivier was revealed as a winner at the prestigious Hyères Fashion Festival, and she hasn’t looked back since. She is now sought-after in the world of fashion, working for the biggest magazines and with the biggest brands. For Vivier, fashion has never been about prettiness or adornment, but the nature of illusion and transformation. It’s her sense of curiosity and irreverence that has allowed her to subvert the traditions of commercial photography, challenging the established rules of what is beautiful and dismantling distinctions between art and fashion imagery.

A new exhibition at the MEP in Paris marks a significant recognition of Vivier’s personal and commercial work. It’s a high-voltage, theatrical and dangerously seductive show, presenting the Parisian photographer’s visual language in which elements of fantasy, fetishism, mythology, romance, underground culture and horror collide. Throughout, her venomous female protagonists project power, all the while pushing the limits of good and bad taste. Indeed, what the show makes clear is Vivier’s vast range of references. She can be as inspired by the surrealist writings of André Pieyre de Mandiargues as she is by a comic strip, as influenced by sci-fi classics like Videodrome (1983) as by the film noir movies of Joseph Losey, and as alive in the monster-packed home of HR Giger as in the 16th-century Mannerist gardens of Italy. And whatever she shoots – bodies, sculptures or artefacts – she does so with a feminine twist

The week Vivier’s show opened, we spoke about the women in her life, horror films, self-portraiture and her latest obsession.

Congratulations on the show, Camille! It must be so cool to have a big show in your home city. What was your upbringing in Paris like?

Camille Vivier: I would say very feminine. I grew up in the 14th with my mother and sister, and my grandmother lived on the same street. My mother worked as a stylist in Paris in the 80s, so you can imagine what that was like, and my father was a photographer. As a kid, I was meeting new people all the time, so it was easy to make connections. I shared a bedroom with my older sister who was very girly. She had Marilyn Monroe posters on the wall, a Betty Boop light and lots of little perfumes. I have memories of her friends coming over to dress up like the girl group Vanity Six, which was produced by Prince, who my mother was super into, too.

It sounds like a real mix of cultural and generational influences. So you had your childhood years in the 80s and teen years in the 90s?

Camille Vivier: Yes. I think it was a mix of this popular culture, the eccentricities of my mother and the more classical education of my grandmother. But I was personally more into underground – or what we would today call ‘queer’ – culture back then, although it was also very normal for me. What was weird was visiting a friend with two parents and having dinner at eight o’clock!

Do you remember your first female fantasy?

Camille Vivier: Maybe Madonna. True Blue (1986) was the first album I ever bought. I picked it up at a gas station on holiday because I thought the cover image was super beautiful.

Do you still have it?

Camille Vivier: I do and have to find it somewhere! I think, subconsciously, all these images have accumulated over time and shaped the way I take pictures and think about light and form, in a quite classical way. But when I started out as an assistant at Purple magazine, fashion photography was more about the anti-fashion aesthetic of Juergen Teller and Wolfgang Tillmans.

How have you seen conventional beauty standards change over the years, from inside and outside the fashion world?

Camille Vivier: As a kid, I remember seeing this weird American book about the ‘most beautiful’ women in the world, who were also the richest women in the world! Since then, step-by-step, I’ve seen things become more inclusive for sure. Using more unconventional bodies in my work is something I’m very conscious of.

How do you find your models?

Camille Vivier: Usually with the help of a casting agent, whether that’s for a commercial job or a personal project. That’s how I met Sophie. I think I was already looking at Robert Mapplethorpe, so I got excited about how I could play with light on an architectural body. In the bodybuilding world, Sophie is in the ‘bikini’ category, which is a bit different because you’re not allowed to do steroids, just a lot of gym. So her physique is relatively small. It was quite academic in a way. Deborah, the British model, I found on Instagram because my algorithm was bringing up a lot of muscly women.

Is she the one you photographed in Sigmund Freud’s house?

Camille Vivier: Yes. I loved the idea of having a strong, muscular woman posing next to the couch in this very dusty, masculine interior. She really shines, kind of like a superhero. I feel Freud’s house – and psychoanalysis generally – is something very interpretive, something you can question. So I didn’t want to make it too symbolically charged. 

Why did you want to include self-portraits in the show?

Camille Vivier: In a way, my self-portraits are a story of my life. I started taking them when I was young because I didn’t have a model. It was kind of funny in a narcissistic way, especially being a young woman. But now I’ve become a narcissist a second time, as I’m now 48! It’s a very pleasant, DIY process. I put some music on, try on different outfits and take pictures on my iPhone. Actually, the cover of my new Polaroid book is me as a child dressed up as a rabbit eating a carrot.

Some things should never change! It’s so important to hold onto that sense of innocence and play, not to mention the curiosity we have about our bodies…

Camille Vivier: For sure. The new book also includes Polaroids of body parts I’ve taken on the TV screen. I recently bought a very old vintage Phillips one that looks like it could be in a David Cronenberg movie.

What’s your favourite Cronenberg film? 

Camille Vivier: Probably The Fly (1986). It’s kind of body horror but not about women’s bodies. I’ve been traumatised by some horror films in the past, but, honestly, I’m more attracted to the aesthetic, atmosphere and psychology of a film rather than the plot. Obviously, the really bad ones are often the best too. Like in Species (1995), the light and frames made a big impression on me. HR Giger designed the models for Sil, the sexy woman who turns into a weird alien-human hybrid.

How did you discover the voodoo candles [as featured in your monograph, Monument]?

Camille Vivier: By chance, in a Cuban shop in Montparnasse. A wax couple were embracing and I thought it could be fun to shoot it on Super 8. So I did a stop-motion film of the candle burning as a reference to Flemish vanitas from the 17th century that speak about the inevitability of death. You could say it was my romantic moment! I started collecting the candles, which can be curvy, phallic or even funny. You can find candles on a birthday cake or dining table, but also, before electricity, they were used as a source of light. I liked the idea that they’re something that touches us all.

Do you get obsessed easily?

Camille Vivier: I’m not a ‘fetishist’, but I would say yes. My big obsession is books, which I guess comes from my parents. I have quite a collection now. Books I’ve found on the street, old magazines, comics… I love beautiful objects too, but I try not to hoard.

What’s your latest obsession?

Camille Vivier: I’m really into angel food cakes at the moment and am looking for the perfect mould to make them. I love the crazy copper ones from the 1800s. They look like architecture.

Where’s your studio?

Camille Vivier: My house is my studio! It’s a very fluid space, a mix of work and domestic life, because I live with my kids. The ceilings are high and there is lots of natural light, so it can become a working space whenever I need. But I can’t do big shoots here.

But big enough for self-portraits!

Camille Vivier: Yes! I’d like to take some proper ones with lights and a tripod soon. Watch this space!

Camille Vivier is at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris until 13 September 2026. Polaroids, a coinciding book, is published by Art Paper Editions and available here.