All images © Brianna Caprozzi
The in-demand fashion and portrait photographer tells BJP about her new photo book published by IDEA books
A fashion industry favourite, who has also photographed Miley Cyrus, Pamela Anderson, Dua Lipa and Chloë Sevigny, Brianna Caprozzi has swapped celebrity culture for family bonds for her publication, Sisters. A documentary project six years in the making, the book depicts sisters and half-sisters, and even female twins. The work is a move away from Capozzi’s usual stylised shoots, but the images remain true to her camp, chic approach.
Dalia Al-Dujaili: What was the motivation for the book?
Brianna Capozzi: I was coming off making my last book Well Behaved Women. It was photographs of eight iconic women in my life, all shot in fabricated scenarios, with fashion, hair, makeup and props. To contrast, I wanted to work on something raw and intimate. Something that was grounded in reality, that I could bring a sense of fantasy to. I wanted to strip back clothing and props and focus entirely on my subjects.
With this in mind, Sisters came to me while I was looking through my archive. I came across photos I had taken in 2014 of Grace and Tessa. They were the first polaroids I ever shot, I was just learning how to use a Mamiya RZ67. I was drawn to these photos still years later. Their features, their dynamic together. How their bodies showed their different personalities. These photos are in the book.
“I think we all left feeling the power of our relationships to each other as women”
Simultaneously as I was seeking new subjects to shoot, my sister just had her first child, my nephew Wade. I spent some time in Jersey helping her adjust to her new life as a mom. It was inspiring. We had a new bond, our relationship was evolving into something different, as it always has during milestones. The project just started simply, asking my best friend Sabrina if I could shoot her and her sister Caroline together. Sabrina was pregnant, that’s the image on the cover. I shot them together seven years earlier while Caroline was pregnant so it felt fitting to capture this new time in their lives. I didn’t know where it would go from here.
DA: The images are very intimate, often shot at home and with the sisters often nude. How did you find the sisters and women you photographed, and how did you approach photographing them?
BC: Many of the sisters in the book had not been photographed before in this way, and there was a palpable feeling of how blessed we were to experience this with each other, it was very collaborative. There was just something special about each shoot that felt different to the way I shoot my fashion work. To shoot people who are so comfortable around each other felt freeing. We would hang out for hours all together doing make up, looking through clothes, gossiping, the shooting time was minimal in comparison. Sometimes I could tell there was a bit of hesitation and nervousness but after the day of shooting they would tell me they felt empowered and how happy they were to share such a special day with their sisters. I think we all left feeling the power of our relationships to each other as women.
DA: What do the images represent for you, and how are they different from other projects photographing women’s relationships?
BC: At the start of this series, I was thinking I would include friendships that felt like sisterhood along with familial sisters. I had these incredible photographs of my friend and her book club. It was all women who were very close, 10 or more of them. They asked me to photograph them together nude similar to the famous group photos by Peter Lindberg of all the ‘90s supermodels. My female friendships are so important to me and I wanted to figure out a way to include them, but as I shot more sisters I realised that, even though both are magical and necessary to my life, they have their differences. With sisters there is an underlying trust and comfort being around each other that is so deep and subconscious. They seem less fragile and dependent on outside constructs. Big age gaps, decades of knowing each other from birth to adulthood. Never chosen by us yet we accept and hold it so closely and protect it wholeheartedly. It’s rich.
DA: Tell me about one group or pair who were particularly interesting to shoot, or who have a particularly interesting story.
BC: I was editing the book with my friend Analisa and we realised that I had a lot of photos of pairs back to back. It felt one dimensional. I went on Instagram that night and searched #6sisters, #7sisters and #8sisters. Sismai got back to me. She had seven biological sisters. They all lived near one another in San Jose, besides one of them who we flew in from Hawaii. They all hadn’t been in the same space together in over a decade! I didn’t have a plan besides packing all of my animal print clothing and favourite shoes.
I have a shoe addiction and I buy ones that don’t fit to use in photos. I stopped at the wig store on the drive from San Francisco to San Jose. We all did each other’s hair and makeup. Trying hair extension clips on each sister one by one. I did some, hairstylist Sarah Lou did some, a few did their own and others asked their sisters to do it because “they were the best at putting on eyeliner”. Being with that many sisters and seeing them all interact was remarkable. Noticing all the different smaller groups and connections. Their ages ranged from 14 to 38 but they all seemed close to each other in some way.
DA: I adore the pregnancy pictures, you rarely see pregnant women presented in this honest and relaxed way. Why were you were keen to show pregnant women in this way?
BC: I did not set out to shoot so many pregnant women but it shows the time of life I am in and my age; this has actually informed another project I am working on. I’m in the chapter where many of my close friends are having children or trying to get pregnant. It’s interesting how pregnancy shows up in relation to sisters. In my case, it brought me and my sister closer but it also comes with a loss. Your relationship evolves and what was the two of you becomes more of a unit.
The cover girls Sabrina and Caroline are twins, Caroline had her first child at 22. She already had three [kids] by the time we took the cover photograph, where Sabrina is shown pregnant with her first-born. Caroline’s oldest was already 13 and she had just undergone abdominal surgery from her last pregnancy, only 12 days before the photo was taken. You could see they were about to enter into a whole new understanding, Sabrina was about to be a mom, something Caroline had already been experiencing for 13 years. It’s a new way to relate and deepen your understanding of one another.
DA: After six years, how did you finally decide the project had come to a close?
BC: It was hard! You don’t realise until you are scouting sisters how many sisters are around you constantly. I was always meeting amazing ones and I could have kept this going for years. There were so many women I didn’t get a chance to shoot. At one point I considered shooting this project for a decade and keeping it as a growing project while I worked on other things, but I knew I couldn’t work on something else while my head was tied up in this. I need to put something out and close it before starting on something new. For a few years I would look at my evolving edit and question what it all said. I wanted to show the magnitude of importance and the nuance involved in sisterhood. Eventually It just felt solid and whole.
Sisters is available for pre-order online
