The visual artist Nadia Lee Cohen has collaborated with a full slate of the biggest stars in the world. She’s created visuals for Beyoncé, taped Kim Kardashian vamping to “Santa Baby,” and directed A$AP Rocky’s “Babushka Boi” music video, among many others—all while making her own boundary-pushing artworks, which have been featured at Jeffrey Deitch and the National Portrait Gallery in London. One of Cohen’s most famed bodies of work, Hello My Name Is, saw the artist, who has also modeled for Schiaparelli and Balenciaga, shapeshifting into 33 different characters; prompting critics to hail her as the new Cindy Sherman.
But Cohen’s latest project sees her stepping in front of the lens, in a collaboration with a star of a different sort: legendary photographer Martin Parr, whose unique style of documentary shooting focuses on the quintessential English experience. Together, they made Julie Bullard, a book of photography meant to resemble a faux-family album. Cohen transforms into Julie, a character who draws inspiration from her real-life childhood babysitter, the first person whose look caught her eye as a kid. She was a glam, bottle blonde in the ’90s who would go on to inspire some of Cohen’s artistic imagery.
Cohen says Parr’s photographs “changed the way I think, in the sense that I recount memories inside my head (especially the ones from growing up in the U.K.) in a way that resembles his photographs.” The artist, who grew up on an isolated farm in the English countryside, moved to Los Angeles in 2005 at 20 years old to pursue her artistic career. But she’s still English to the bone, and Julie Bullard proves it.
“I have made a lot of work based on my fascination for America, and now felt it was time to do something that drew on my British roots,” Cohen told W via e-mail when asked how the project came about. “Who better to photograph that than Martin Parr?”
Was this something you or Parr pitched, or did IDEA, the publisher, come to you with the concept?
Nope, no pitch. Angela Hill and David Owen [co-directors of IDEA] are really good friends of mine; most ideas for new books come about after a conversation, quickly deciding if an idea is terrible or brilliant based on shared interests and taste. I was speaking with David about how Julie Bullard was kind of the OG character inspiration for me, and one of the first people I knew where I took notice of their physical appearance. She had a mass of blonde curly hair, a pretty face, and generally the effortless cool of anyone older than you when you’re six years old.
We spoke about how this informed a lot of the characters I am interested in, and how it would be interesting to reconstruct a physical narrative of her life outside of when she was my babysitter, live those scenarios as though they were real, and for Martin to photograph them. Essentially, a conversation between David and I snowballed into this little brown pleather book.
You say Parr is your favorite photographer. What about his work resonates with you?
There was a moment on set where I said I loved a photo he took. He didn’t agree, told me it was a bad photo, and said I had “terrible taste.” I said, “Well, what does that say about you—because you’re my favorite?” But, yes, he is my favorite. He’s up there with the greats, maybe the greatest British photographer of all time—that’s enough, or his head will swell.
What sticks about his work? All of it: the colors, the characters, the humor, the unpretentiousness, the framing, but most of all the Britishness. No one does it like him.
How much did fashion, hair, and makeup play a part in creating this character based on Julie Bullard?
It’s always integral, but my team very much just gets it after one conversation. We were looking at what decisions normal people in the ’90s made with their clothing, hair, and makeup, and created a look that hopefully felt real, and not like a caricature. Although Julie B. is a real person, we are going off my fragmented memories rather than any visual references. So, in the physical sense, it’s more like building a person from scratch based on a nostalgic feeling, which is actually the way I like to do it, anyway.
