Making Shadows
Images by Alexandra Grant
Featuring Alia Raza
Styled by Lisa Mosko
Makeup by Dina Gregg
Hair by Mishelle Parry
Fashion Assistant Melissa Kim
“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world
must be shadow, the million moving shapes
and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in
bureau drawers and closets and suitcases,
and shadow under houses and trees and stones,
and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles,
and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it,
on the night side of the earth.”
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Alexandra Grant
A Los Angeles text-based artist, Alexandra Grant engages language and words as the basis for her sculpture, painting, drawing and video work. She has exhibited internationally, with shows at MOCA and LACMA (Los Angeles), among others. Grant has collaborated extensively with hypertext author Michael Joyce, as well as artist Channing Hansen, philosopher Hélène Cixous, Watts House Project and actor Keanu Reeves, with whom she created the photo series and book, Shadows.
This series is a collaboration with LA-based artist Alexandra Grant, coinciding with the release of her photography book and exhibition, Shadows, with actor Keanu Reeves. Inspired by Grant’s project, we invited her to create our own shadow series of stylized fashion images, featuring artist Alia Raza.
Grant’s images in Shadows depict Reeves’ shadow in the midst of movement, capturing the interplay of darkness and light as it echos the physicality of his unseen body. Isolating the phenomenon of shadow in an intimate performance, Grant and Reeves consider the shadow’s narratives through metaphor, psychology and projection. View More
ALIA RAZA
A Los Angeles-based video artist, Alia Raza is co-founder of fragrance line Régime des Fleurs. Scent inspires Raza in life and in work—as in her 2009 film The Fragile White Blossoms Emit a Hypnotic Cascade of Tropical Perfumes Whose Sweet Heady Odor Leaves Its Victim Intoxicated, which engages the psychological and sociological significance of the beauty rituals of the famous, including Chloe Sevigny, Kim Gordon, Devendra Banhart and Patrik Ervell.
