By Oliver Eglin, June 10, 2026
Opening to coincide with Photo London, Sarah Moon’s latest exhibition with Michael Hoppen Gallery is a survey of previously unseen works made in the last twenty years. The exhibition is her fifth with the gallery and comprises a surprising mix of both her more recognisable fashion imagery, alongside a less familiar set of urban landscape photographs.
Propped up behind the front window, the first image you encounter is a mid-length black and white fashion portrait. Shot in Moon’s slightly blurred style, this enchanting image (“Avril pour Elle 2”, 2003) depicts a faun-like figure, her breasts exposed above a zigzagged corset with her hair split into two serpentine bunches, twisted in loops and jutting from her head like a set of horns. The unforgiving glare of the midday sun blasts against the frame’s white mount and casts long dark shadows from the windowpane across the surface of the photograph.
After relocating to a new space in Holland Park, Michael Hoppen now occupies a more compressed and intimate exhibition space. Works are arranged closely together, somewhat jumbled up and at times exposed to glaring shadows from the gallery’s glass-fronted window. Yet this kind of informality possibly suits Moon’s work; her timeless photographs of fleeting beauty call for a more careful viewing and, in this somewhat subdued setting, the prints leap from the gallery’s grey walls.
As you would expect from a Sarah Moon exhibition there are numerous examples of her fashion portraits, images that have become a staple of her oeuvre. What is most interesting about this set of photographs, however, is the inclusion of a group of less familiar landscape works. In her portrayal of people or animals, there is always a trace of movement, blurred edges and soft focus that lend the images a quiet that moves beyond observation towards something more impressionistic. In the urban landscape photographs however, everything remains completely still, hard architectural edges cut rigid black lines through the frame. One photograph (“The Shadow, New York” 2022) shows the tops of houses peppered with clusters of chimney pots, which line up along narrow ledges and look like something from the set of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
In her studio aesthetic the subject appears delicate and dreamlike, yet in her photographs of the outside world, Moon’s vision is much harder, dystopian almost. One of the exhibition’s most impressive images is an elevated view of the railway junction at Gare de Lyon in Paris. The photograph (“Gare de Lyon”, 2023) has no horizon, instead Moon’s perspective looks down onto the scene as a sea of overhead cables and wiring fades into the smoggy distance. Beneath the electrical lines, an expanse of overlapping train tracks meanders through the frame. Despite the total absence of movement, there is a real sense of energy to the image, as a sea of spaghetti-like lines writhes across the frame.
In an exhibition without a clear curatorial theme, there does not seem to be any obvious sense to where this is going, or exactly what it is Moon is trying to say. Yet the more closely you look at these ostensibly unconnected works, the more their aesthetic sensibility begins to converge. In Moon’s fashion photography the model and the clothes are what dominate, yet in the background shapes and angular lines echo those of her urban scenes. Moon’s sensitivity to the way that light falls across surfaces is ultimately what binds these disparate worlds. She once said in an interview that she took “almost the same picture for twenty years”, and yet, here at least we see some different pictures emerging. You get the feeling that fashion is merely a means to an end, and for Moon, the opportunities to make photographs are infinite.
Oliver Eglin is a photographer and writer based in London. His critical writing has appeared in PORT Magazine and he was recently Artist in Residence at Guyan Huaxiang Art Center in Zhejiang, China.
SARAH MOON "Oiseau des îles" 2003.
SARAH MOON "Dior by Maria Grazia Chiuri", 2024.
SARAH MOON "Gare de Lyon" 2023.
SARAH MOON "Gare de Lyon", 2019.
SARAH MOON "Les toits de Paris" 2009.
SARAH MOON "The Shadow, New York" 2022.