Jessica Rabbit took the train to London to meet Thurstan Redding in full regalia. Or at least one cosplayer dressed to look like her. Thurstan, a photographer used to collaborating with brands like Gucci, Chanel, Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs, had spent years trying to get a group of cosplayers together for a book project. She was inspired by an encounter she had with a daring traveler on the London DLR, who sat among the worldly passengers dressed as a sassy superhero. Work on the book, entitled cosplay kids, started in 2018 (he even mentioned it to us in his installment of our Year in Photos series), but it’s only now seeing the light of day. Turns out convincing a bunch of cosplayers to pose for you is easier said than done.
He drove Thurstan to Comic Con, which acted as an open casting call for the book, and over the next several years, a trickle of these cosplayers would gather: C3PO, old-school Batman, Sailor Moon, and Ursulas. Casting director Finlay MacAulay was tasked with finding the right people, while Jean-Baptiste Talbourdet Napoleone and Lolita Jacobs oversaw art direction. “The project is a celebration of cosplay,” Thurstan says, speaking via Zoom call the day before he kicks off the book’s corresponding exhibit in Paris. “It’s a tribute to the amount of effort they put into all of this.”
Thurstan says he was “conscious of making sure they were portrayed in a way that felt empowering.” The result is a series of images that sensitively capture the efforts of these artists to recreate their favorite fictional stars. Each image, whether a sci-fi or comic book character, contrasts the subject’s meticulous cosplay recreation with a domestic backdrop. Harley Quinn in the kitchen; X Men‘s Mysterio lying on the asphalt of a suburban street. “Part of the intrigue and beauty of cosplay for me is that it’s an element of surrealism that exists in the most everyday context,” he says. “That juxtaposition was something that appealed to me. We wanted to reflect that by choosing fairly regular or familiar settings, because that’s the reality where cosplay exists most of the time. I didn’t want to do something that felt aesthetically over the top, where we would create each cosplayer’s universe.” The same principle was applied to lighting as well; the skies behind those cosplayers filmed outside are wide and cinematic, shaded orange and lilac.
Thurstan describes the project as both a fashion project and a documentary work. The two themes, haute couture, which he is used to, and cosplay, a relatively recent discovery, have a lot in common. “For me, fashion is also cosplay,” he says. “In fashion, you are building characters. In an editorial or campaign, you are creating a narrative. When I was photographing the cosplayers, I realized the parallels. They were exactly the same.
The project, the time spent with these people who so confidently drew attention to their outfits and interests, taught Thurstan things about himself. “He taught me a lot about acceptance and tolerance,” he says. “Everyone can be a part of this.” This includes Thurstan himself. In one of the images, Thurstan is standing in a Star Wars stormtrooper outfit, surrounded by his battalion. Then, as he says, “All of us are playing characters in everyday life.”
by Thurstan Redding cosplay kids is published by Thames & Hudson / Volume and is available to order here. A portion of the proceeds will go to the British Red Cross to support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. A public exhibition of the images will take place at the Galerie Au Roi in Paris from March 6-9.