East&West Magazine - January 2010

THE BEAUTY, THE MYSTERY THE DARKNESS: THE JOURNEY OF JESSIE CRAIG

The paintings of Klimt, Friedrich, Gericault, Goya and Egon Schiele - with artistic influences like these, photographer Jessie Craig is capturing the attention of the who's who of London and Paris. Pretty amazing for a girl from Ottawa.

Text by: Isabel Sefarin. Photographs by: Jessie Craig.

Photographer Jessie Craig made a well-timed departure from her native Canada right after graduating from the Ontario College of Art & Design and in an act of artistic savvy began plotting a daring path right out of Toronto and onto the European art scene. Like a slew of famed New World artists before her, she took a leap of historic proportions.

"I moved to Paris without speaking fluent French or knowing a single person. I made a list of every major modeling agency in the city and set up meetings for them to see my portfolio."

Back home in Toronto, "People in the fashion industry kept telling me my style wasn't commercial enough for them to give me work."

Gritty determination in order, fired by instinct and the brand of romanticism espoused in youth, the artist's French sojourn surfaced as a divine solution. Within six months the newcomer was shooting editorials for a startling number of publications. And Craig, now based in London, says since relocating to her new city "Each progressive month has been my busiest to date." Her work has appeared in: Clash, Dirrty Glam, Vanity Teen, Grazia UK, PUSH IT, Magnificent Magazine and Milk X Monthly.

Last spring I discovered Craig on the website "Fashion Does it Better" - and was spellbound. Her pictorials were terribly original, strikingly influenced by a twinned repertoire of film and literature. All this and her images were organized like chapters in a consumptive novel, with ethereal names reminiscent of chapters: "Dream", "Une Femme", "These Nights" and "Smoke".

The following photo shoot by Craig, entitled "Phantom", was inspired by Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera and is beset with allusions to love, monsterdom and an obsessive darkness.

"I was looking at some stills from the 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera and started to think about what would have happened if Christine had chosen Erik instead of Raoul."

The results are Craig's nouveau version of Christine: an icy heroine in a curious urban inspired hell. Shot on the streets of Paris, the images bleed seductively through the photographer's lens. They are a complicated concoction of beauty and soft horror, artfully played up by the noteworthy seventeen-year-old Dutch stunner, Charlotte Bos.

In the following pages, allow Jessie Craig's modern day rendition of Christine both frighten and entrance you. See exactly why this twenty-three-year-old has fashion circles in the oft jaded London and Paris straight-backed, wide-eyed and rapt.