Sarah Moon

Sarah Moon (born 1941 as Marielle Warin) is a French photographer and filmmaker whose work blurs the lines between fashion, memory and poetic fiction. Early in her life, her family fled occupied France for England, where she began studying drawing and later worked as a model in London and Paris under the name Marielle Hadengue.

By 1970 she had turned to photography full-time, adopting the pseudonym Sarah Moon. She quickly made her mark in fashion photography, collaborating with major houses and magazines including Vogue, Chanel, Cacharel and Dior. She was also the first woman to shoot the Pirelli Calendar, in 1972. Over time, Moon’s vision moved away from the commercial realm toward personal, introspective and atmospheric imagery. Her photographs are known for their dreamlike quality, soft blurs, grainy textures, muted tones and a focus on suggestion over clarity.

From the mid-1980s onward, she increasingly pursued gallery work and film, making shorts such as Circuss and Le Fil Rouge, as well as directing music videos and visual projects. Her later work often revolves around themes of memory, loss, childhood, the ephemeral and the uncanny, edging her practice into an intimate, poetic territory.

Moon’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including major retrospectives (for example PasséPrésent at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris) and has been collected by leading institutions. She has also received numerous accolades, such as the Grand Prix National de la Photographie and induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame.