
Tête-à-Tête: Puces POPDec 5, 2017
Tête-à-tête: Alexandre Faulkner, winner of Fashion POP 2017
An interview with Alexandre Faulkner, winner of Fashion POP's 2017 editorial photography category.
Can you contextualize your editorial and tell us a bit more about the mood and the intention behind the scenes that were shot?
I above all wanted to convey a feeling of intimacy. I let my subject lead the way and inform the composition with their own body language and gestures. I found out that in most instances I could make a link from these gestures to an emotion that spurred from me. I started seeing all of these patterns. The series is as much about love, power, and unity as it is about separation, distance and endings.

How does the title ‘monthly payment’ come into play for you?
Well my current, more global project is titled Monthly Payment and is about the sacrifices we make. It is a tongue in cheek way for me to speak about my struggle dealing with the limits and permutations of capitalism and hyper-consumerism this generation experiences, most specifically undermined communities. I believe this era has enough “brands” thus I aim to create a platform that encompasses fashion, media, visual art and relationships through experimentation and exchange. For me Monthly Payment does not have a static meaning or telos and will exponentially grow as we collaborate with more artists. I like the idea of fighting social injustice with humour and parody and what I do tends to reflect on that.

There is a certain candid feel to your photographs wherein the people pictured feel like more than just models, but also friends. Who are they and what do they mean to you? What was the planning and styling process like?
Oh, totally. They are in fact friends, lovers, acquaintances. We are constantly projecting meaning onto images so for me it was natural to create the images and through selection and edits to then insert a narrative. So to say, although the series was planned and thought about in terms of the ideas and symbols I wanted to evoke, the images themselves are informal and largely centered around the characters portrayed. I am an extremely emphatic yet introverted person so sometimes it is easier to tell you about myself through the people I love than put myself out there.

What was your inspiration and desire for doing this photo essay?
This past year was for me about transition and self-reflection. This series was set in both Montreal and Paris, the two cities where I spend most of my time and ended up being an assessment of these two parallel universes for me, past and present.

What’s next for you?
For me everything is about balance and moving forward. The Monthly Payment debut collection and campaign will be out in the next few weeks so keep your eyes peeled! We are already starting to work on the second phase of Monthly Payment and I’m excited to see where that’ll take us. On the other hand, I’m a model manager in a Montreal based agency and I will continue to develop new faces for the seasons to come.