Lemonade has never really been something I go out of my way for. It’s there, it’s fine, but it’s not something I think much about.
But photography has a way of shifting things.
Give me the right light, the right setting, and the right two women, and suddenly it stops being about the drink. It becomes about what’s happening around it, what the camera turns it into.
At that point, I’m not really interested in lemonade.
I’m watching it.
And that’s where it lands for me. With the right setup, it becomes less of a refreshment and more of my idea of a spectator sport. I love it!
Of course, that takes me in a different direction than what was intended. It started in the early 1980s at the University of Texas at Austin as a campus stunt. People walking around in public in their underwear, acting like nothing is unusual. It spread, became organized, and now sits on the calendar as a planned bit of public absurdity. That’s the idea behind it.
I shoot in the space between fashion, pornochic, and nude because it doesn’t hide what it is. The sexuality is not implied, and it’s not softened. It’s part of the structure of the photograph.
Sévérine brought that directly into my shoot. Her presence is openly sexual, controlled, and fully aware of itself. Nothing tentative about it. The makeup and styling by Blanche LeBeau push it further, not decorative, not secondary, but part of the same intent, shaping how that sexuality is presented and held in place.
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