![]() ![]() “It’s an example of how cosplay is a means of expression and a means of connecting with people,” he added.Īs a fashion photographer, Redding has worked on campaigns with major labels like Dior, Gucci and Marc Jacobs, shooting top models including Adwoa Aboah and Kendall Jenner. “And the one thing they had in common before had been ‘Star Wars.’ So this obsession of hers was, in a way, the only way she could connect with her father, despite the fact that they’re not on speaking terms anymore. “Her father stopped talking to her when she transitioned,” Redding explained. In a photo caption, she explains that cosplay helped her embrace her “true self” while undergoing gender transition. Take, for instance, a retail worker dressed as a “Star Wars” Resistance pilot. Assuming a character can, ironically, help people be themselves, said Redding, who created the project alongside art directors Jean-Baptiste Talbourdet-Napoleone and Lolita Jacobs. Their accounts demonstrate how cosplay is not just about escapism, but self-expression. The photos are accompanied by commentary from the subjects themselves. The publication features almost 60 cosplayers, their characters ranging from the Wicked Witch of the West and Indiana Jones to groups of Wonder Women and Sailor Moons. ![]() Having exhibited his series at a Paris gallery earlier this year, Redding is now preparing to release “Kids of Cosplay” as a limited edition book. “It’s a very fluid community in the way it communicates.” “Comic Cons only happen a couple of times a year and, the rest of the time, a lot of communication is digital,” Redding explained. Today, the subculture comprises a sprawling ecosystem of online fan communities. (Japanese anime and manga continues to be a source of inspiration for cosplayers, with one of Redding’s subjects dressed as the antagonist from the manga series “Kakegurui - Compulsive Gambler”). The term “cosplay” - a portmanteau of the words costume and play - meanwhile originated in Japan, where fan subcultures exploded in popularity in the 1990s. “It’s accepting in ways that other communities generally just aren’t.”įan costuming, in a contemporary sense, first gained popularity at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), which was first held in the US in 1939 and has since traveled to cities around the globe. “It’s the most inclusive and accepting space - not only in terms of gender and sexuality, but also disability,” added Redding, who counted plus-size and LGBTQ cosplayers among his subjects. “During the shoots, a lot of people expressed that they had been unable to make a lot of friends or feel part of a community while growing up, and that cosplay had provided them with that. “The social aspect of it is probably the most important, in the sense that it’s a community of people who really support each other and are genuinely very good friends,” the photographer said. The reason, Redding explained, is that cosplay has become a “global phenomenon” - one that connects like-minded people around the world regardless of where they are. A lot of people have asked me if it was shot in America, which it wasn’t … it was actually within a very small radius,” he said in a video interview from Paris, declining to reveal precisely where the images were created. “We wanted to make sure none of the locations were easily attributable to a specific country. And if the backdrops feel like they could be anywhere, that’s precisely the point. But having initially shot portraits at London’s Comic Con in 2018, Redding spent the next three years gaining cosplayers’ trust and photographing them in distinctly suburban settings, from bus stops to nondescript scrubland. It is a community that’s rarely documented outside the surrounds of fan conventions.
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