Schohaja, Fashion’s Backstage Shutterbug, Displays Most Intimate Runway Moments in New Exhibition – V Magazine

She is the most fashionable fly on the wall. She is the Big Brother of backstage haute couture. She is the documentarian of fashion’s peace and pandemonium, and she is unveiling a new photo exhibit this month in Hyères, France.

Schohaja, high fashion’s backstage photographer, has entered the gallerina girl chat. Since 1999, Schohaja’s lenses have captured the spectacles of couture’s runway shows. But her snapshots are not of the runway. Lurking behind the curtains is a chaotic cosmos of preparation. This world is characterized by blasts of hairspray, faces made up in a flurry, and last-minute alterations. 

With Schohaja‘s work found in digital publications and international magazines such as V Magazine, T, French Vogue, Vogue Homme International, Crash, Numéro, GQ Style, Sunday Times, Harpers BAZAAR, Dazed, Purple, and Vogue.com, the slanted beams of light and fuzzy outlines permeating each photo reveal the fast-paced nature of those backstage enclaves, and blurred peripherals lend an aura of modish helter-skelter.

Schohaja’s exclusive vignettes of fashion’s tumult document the beginning of a collection’s trajectory, the process of a runway show’s creation. In the picture book of couture catwalks, Schohaja’s photos present a new chapter.

Today’s high fashion models are the epitome of poker face, their expressions never betraying any emotion apart from fierce aloofness. Yet, Schohaja’s discreet nature as a behind-the-scenes photographer divulges the humanistic qualities of such beacons of high fashion. Furrowed brows, lounging figures, and tin-foiled hair all manifest into portraits of unfiltered human emotion, as viewers become privy to the intricacies of haute couture and the mechanisms of the runway show.

The exhibition kicked off with an opening in Hyères, France during the 39th Festival International de Mode, de Photographie et d’Accessoires, opening Saturday October 12th with featured images including scenes from CHANEL, Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, and more. The exhibition will run from October 10, 2024 to February 12, 2025.