Guen Fiore’s Proud Portraits of Girls Coming Into Their Own

Guen Fiore has always struggled to move on, to let go of one project and start the next. It’s why her debut photo book, which compiles portraits she has taken of young women since 2018, is called Echo. “The first picture marked my direction as a photographer,” she says of a softly lit portrait of Beatrice taken in Rome. “It reminds me why I love to take pictures, and what I really believe in.”

The photographer’s subjects were between the ages of 17 and 26 when she took their picture. Fiore, who is self-taught, scouted most of the women on Instagram, where she was “inspired by the way they saw themselves.” She captured them coming of age at their parents’ homes, where beige carpets and floral curtains frame their faces, and in their bedrooms, where stacks of books and unfinished light fixtures add to the intimacy of her shots. “I just wanted to do a truthful representation of these girls,” she says. 

Here, Guen Fiore speaks about coming of age, beauty standards, and empowering herself and other women.

“Growing up in Italy, I was very influenced by the concept of beauty. I believe it is the same everywhere, but you always grow up with the idea that you really don’t fit with what you see. It makes you feel like you’re not good enough for many things.

“I have found myself sometimes trying to convince people that the girls that I photograph are beautiful. And honestly, I always feel like, how is it possible that you don’t see it? I have come to the conclusion that people are probably just not used to seeing these kinds of girls in a picture, because I’m sure that if you saw them in the street, you would consider them amazing.

“Someone told me that these girls somehow remind them of me, so there’s probably been a lot of mirroring. Maybe photography has helped me see the beauty in those girls, which helped me to see beauty in myself as well, which I have always struggled with.

“Every time I tried to put Eliza, who is on the cover, in an editorial, I noticed the struggle of the stylists who weren’t really comfortable dressing her until I worked with Robbie Spencer. I think that was the first time that I brought Eliza on a set for a fashion editorial, and I felt like, okay, this is someone who finally understands how to work with this body. Together, we made some of my favourite pictures of her. What I love about Eliza is that she has this striking body and she just doesn’t give a shit. She will wear a tiny top and she’s just very proud of her figure.

“I never over-direct people because I always tend to want to preserve a bit of their own identity and I don’t feel my work is ever about performing. It’s pretty much about the person. The secondary aspect is about sexuality. During lockdown – when I think all of us were taking a lot of personal pictures – it was the first time that I actually took self-portraits. I was in a long-distance relationship, and I realised how empowering it is to see yourself in that way.

“In the last shoot I did with Molly, which happened last year, I hadn’t seen her for two years and I realised how much she’d grown up and changed. I remembered her being so shy when I first started to photograph her. She always told me, ‘I wish I could see myself the way you see me.’ I always perceived that maybe she didn’t really like her appearance. Seeing her at 25, I could see how much self-confidence she had gained and how much she had grown up. It was very inspiring.”

Echo by Guen Fiore is published by Patrick Remy Studio and is out now.