Photographer Lucie Rox and stylist Kyanisha Morgan’s new zine is a surreal experimentation in fashion and photography, drawing from their ten years of friendship
French-born photographer Lucie Rox and stylist Kyanisha Morgan have been friends for nearly a decade. Fuelled by a shared desire to rediscover an intimate and unfiltered artistic process, the duo transformed Rox’s Paris apartment into a surreal creative haven to create Untitled, a photo zine which strips away the excess to focus on beauty and creation. The everyday space was repurposed for an experiment in light, texture and form, resulting in images that feel instinctive and personal.
Mixing established and emerging designers, they pull pieces from Léa Swarovski, Soven Atelier, Stein, and Annelise Michelson sit alongside looks from Undercover, Courrèges, and Panconesi, curated by Morgan with a balance of archive finds and personal pieces. That same freedom carries through every element of the shoot. Yumiko Hikage’s sculptural wigs reshape hair into abstract forms, while Natsuki Oneyama’s surreal makeup adds subtle unpredictability.
Here, the duo speak about the project in their own words.
“Our friendship has been a huge part of this collaboration, it allows for honest conversations – after ten years, we know each other so well on a personal level that we already had that level of intimacy for a project like this. We had fun mixing pieces from our own wardrobes, like teenagers getting ready at a friend’s house before a night out – except this time, it was on two models, with Lucie’s living room as the studio and Yumi’s wigs everywhere.
“When we first talked about the zine, we didn’t want to be too restrictive in what we could do. We wanted to reconnect with a more intimate way of creating, something different to the more commercial or very produced shoots we’ve got used to through the years. We wanted to find a place of experimentation and playfulness for the entire team, like when we all started and we would be like, ‘Let’s just take some pictures this weekend,’ with no real plans. Now, we all have ten years of experience and know what we’re doing. Still, we needed a minimum of planning so we focused our research on the ideas that always move us through our work: how to transform the everyday into something surreal and abstract.
“Creative industries are increasingly driven by commerce and box-ticking rather than authenticity and true diversity in all its forms. The pressure to be commercially viable makes creatives feel disposable if their work doesn’t fit the status quo, which is dangerous for creativity. Not everything we create will be ‘good’, and that’s okay – even necessary. Working through mediocrity is part of discovering our true creative selves. Experimentation is essential for growth, refining our voice, and responding to the world around us.
“At the end of the day, I think that’s the reason why we do this job. Of course, you have amazing experiences with commercial clients or magazines, but at the core of it, you want to create with no boundaries. In this industry, you tend to get hired based on what you’ve done in the past – sometimes you’ll be asked to reproduce exactly a picture you've done before – so there is often little room to expand your creativity and explore new things. These projects are essential to growing creatively.
“I hope that [people who see our zine] can feel some emotions through the images, that we can take them in a little world of our own for a bit. Hopefully, it inspires people to expand what they view to be a fashion project, and push some creative boundaries in that frame.”
Untitled by Lucie Rox and Kyanisha Morgan is self-published, and is out now. The zine is launching in London on February 20 at Claire de Rouen books – find more information here.
