The winner of the The British Journal of Photography International Award (2017), Foam Talent Award (2016), the reGeneration3 award (2015), the Catlin Art Prize Visitor Vote (2013), and titled ‘Best in Book’ in Creative Review’s Photography Annual (2017), photographer Juno Calypso has received an unprecedented amount of international acclaim since graduating from the London College of Communication in 2012. Her work has been featured in Vogue Italia, TIME Magazine, The Guardian, Paper, i-D, Dazed and Confused, The Sunday Times, The Independent and VICE Magazine.
Though an emerging photographer, Calypso’s two collections -- ‘The Honeymoon’ and ‘Joyce’ -- are remarkable in their confident handling of subject matter, confronting the thorny ontological questions thrown up by what it means to be feminine , or rather to perform femininity, in our absurd contemporary. Where ‘Joyce’, the earlier of the two collections, saw Calypso adopt an eponymous alter-ego, a vessel through which the artist reenacted the underlife of womanhood with satirical melodrama, ‘The Honeymoon’ drags the theatre into her own life. Armed with a ‘suitcase of wigs and lingerie’, Calypso posed as a travel writer, occupying a string of cheap motel rooms across the United States to ‘perform solitary acts of desire and disappointment’.
Calypso’s images sear with a luminous, acidic saturation that underscores the tragically dramatic irony of her subject matter. It is a testament to her talent that these photographs, which confront the depressing asymmetry of gender relations, glow with such wry comedy.
