HOS: Your path to visual media started at 17, travelling and learning on film sets before moving into fashion photography. What first drew you to the camera?

Sonia Sieff: I was born and raised in the photography world. Photography is in my blood. Both my parents were photographers, and my family had a lab and a studio in our apartment in Paris. When I was a child, we would have intense discussions about the pictures my dad had shot during the day. Our dinners were animated with critical opinion. I guess that’s left a footprint, considering I decided to live the same way my parents did.

“[It’s] a real provocation to show men through the female gaze […]”

HOS: What does “RENDEZ-VOUS!” mean to you in the context of your work?

SS: I wanted a title which sounds good in both French and English. A rendez-vous is a romantic proposition to which I could add my own personal twist. Putting an exclamation mark changes the meaning in French. It becomes the imperative tense, meaning ‘to surrender’. I found it a good title to trigger and define the masculinity I was looking for.

HOS: How do you navigate intimacy, vulnerability and power when photographing nude bodies? And how does it feel to be a woman photographing male nudes?

SS: The men who accepted were brave. I could feel they were offering me the most intimate part of themselves—getting naked in front of someone they didn’t know, and with no seductive game. For most of them it was a real challenge, and I thank them.

“The men who accepted were brave. I could feel they were offering me the most intimate part of themselves—getting naked in front of someone they didn’t know, and with no seductive game.”

HOS: In your eyes, what differentiates the male body from the female body in photography—both technically and emotionally?

SS: Women ‘know’ how to pose, even if they’ve never done it before. We’re brought up – culturally; through art, magazines and movies – seeing naked female bodies. All of culture is mainly mediated by the male gaze, so in my books I didn’t want to play this game the other way around and neutralise the gaze. I wanted them to be, act and pose naturally in front of my lens.

HOS: Any interesting or memorable anecdotes from this series? 

SS: One man ate a tomato in a suggestive way, which really surprised me and made me laugh!

HOS: Many of your portraits are set in landscapes and interiors which carry an interesting weight. How do you choose a setting?

SS: For Les Françaises, interiors were part of the picture, and I needed to be connected to the space to have a good shoot. I was looking for astonishing locations: l’Opera de Paris, the Castle of Ilbarritz, Parisian apartments, the Mamo in Marseille, etc. For RENDEZ-VOUS!, I was more focused on intimacy, skin, being able to get closer to my models (who weren’t friends, contrary to the women I’d photographed). I mostly had a lot of fun, though some trips were more painful. When I stayed in Kyiv, just before the war, I could watch men training, and the spaces I shot were full of ghosts. 

HOS: When you were sequencing RENDEZ-VOUS!, what kind of narrative or rhythm did you want to create for the viewer? Do you see it as a diary, a choreography or something else entirely?

SS: Les Françaises was built in chapters, starting with the women’s names. RENDEZ-VOUS! mixes pictures. It’s more about rhythm. As for narrative, I shot men all over Europe during the pandemic. Back then, remember, humanity was all going through the same exact story. We were all, in a way, connected. It was a pause from our lives, and this made me want to revisit my first love—analogue photography. Meeting people for real. Being alone in front of men I was meeting for the first time. Being authentic and pure.