Darcey Axon is a 21-year-old Fashion and Beauty Photographer from Scotland. She completed her undergraduate degree at Leeds Arts University and graduated with a First Class Honours in 2022.
Fuelled by fantasy, her work explores themes of mythology, surrealism and fairy-tale. Her imagery aims to offer the viewer a surreal form of escape from the world’s increasingly cataclysmic news.
Eclipse is an image that was created during a test shoot for a short task-based project. Darcey was inspired by a challenging lighting technique used by a historical photographer named Hiro. Fascinated by a number of his photographs in which the lighting alone created unexpected shapes on the subject; she went on to adapt and apply this to her own work through experimentation in studio.
Thalassa, meaning ‘the personification of the sea’, is part of the editorial shot for Darcey’s final major project at university and was later published in Pap Magazine.
This project investigated the idea of mutation in sea life. The aim was to effectively merge humankind and life beneath the surface of the sea to create a series of ‘mutated’ hybrid characters. The piece asks the question ‘what might we look like if one day we were forced to mutate and evolve in order to live our lives underwater?’
The lighting seen in Thalassa is the result of refining the technique seen in Eclipse. Through the use of a homemade piece of kit called a gobo, Darcey was able to manipulate the light into a much smaller and more precise circular shape which she then used to illuminate the model’s eye.
The beautiful garment seen in Thalassa was made by the very talented fashion designer Yun Jeong. Modelling in both Thalassa and Eclipse by Anujin Roberts from Atlantis Models and makeup by Josie McIver.
