Lise Sarfati: women on the verge

'Malaïka #13, North Sunset Boulevard, 2010' from 'On Hollywood'

After living and working in Russia for 10 years, in 2003 the French-born photographer Lise Sarfati decided to drive across America: “Just a road trip from the east to the west, like in the American tradition of photography, but not with the same spirit,” she explained last year in an interview for the online site ASX. On that first trip she concentrated on the lives of young, middle-class women, much the same kind of people who might make up the audience for her pictures. She hoped viewers would identify with her subjects, who in the mutability of their appearance – dress, hair colour and make-up – expressed the fragile sense of personal identity in a society where image is all. Since then she has completed several series of pictures, two of which will be shown next month, one in London, the other in Los Angeles.

'Ajibike, La Baig Avenue, 2009' from 'On Hollywood'

She focuses on two pairs of sisters: Sasha and Sloane, their mother Christine and her sister Gina. Rather than emphasising family ties, each woman is photographed in isolation, lost in a kind of internal meditation which suggests the personal struggles to which they are prey. For On Hollywood she moved out to the street, to Hollywood Boulevard, where lives are stretched to breaking point. Here she found girls living on the edge, drawn by the lure of fame, struggling with the emotional and economic consequences of failure: working as strippers, pole dancers, actresses, girls doing three different jobs a day.

'Christine #04 Oakland, CA 2005' from 'She'

“I didn’t offer payment. It was a combination of me choosing the right woman I wanted to photograph, and then finding what they bring to me from their lives,” she said. For this she used up her last rolls of Kodachrome 64, the same colour film stock that was used for early Hollywood movies. It was discontinued in 2009, but the resonance is still there.

'Gina #08 Oakland, CA 2009' from 'She'

‘On Hollywood’: copyright Lise Sarfati/courtesy Rose Gallery, Los Angeles; ‘She’: copyright Lise Sarfati/courtesy Brancolini Grimaldi

'Sloane #66 Oakland, CA 2009' from 'She'

'Sasha #20 Emeryville, CA 2007' from 'She'

‘She’ is at Brancolini Grimaldi, London, from February 3 to March 17. ‘On Hollywood’ is at Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, from February 25 to March 26.

‘She’, with a text by Quentin Bajac, will be published by Twin Palms in spring 2012