Emma
Summerton

This is
Emma Summerton

Bold creativity and a distinctive artistic vision mark the work of renowned fashion photographer Emma Summerton.

The Australian-born visual artist, who studied at Sydney’s National Art School and once dreamed of being a painter, is known for her dramatic Vogue covers, technical brilliance and love of fashion.

Summerton was introduced to fashion photography while working as an assistant in Australia, greatly inspired by the images in Vogue Italia during the editorship of Franca Sozzani. Her goal of working for the magazine was achieved after she was taken under the wing of Edward Enninful, then a rising fashion director and now editor-in-chief of British Vogue.

Admirers describe her pictures as having a unique signature, an element of the unexpected. Summerton, meanwhile, approaches photography as a conversation with her subject: who is the woman in the picture? What is she thinking? This information then informs the image she takes.

The approach lies at the heart of Summerton’s Pirelli Calendar, which celebrates the “beauty, strength, intrigue and talents” of the women who have inspired her, while giving the models a platform to “express their larger world”.

Photographing ‘The Cal’ has been a decades-long dream for Summerton. “It was like some kind of magic spell finally worked,” she says about the commission that led to the creation of Love Letters to the Muse.