Donna Trope talks about 5 shots from her sultry exhibition in Paris

By Léa Zetlaoui.

Donna Trope, a photographer between hyperfemininity and irony

As a photography icon and explorer of sensual aesthetics, Donna Trope has made her mark as one of the sharpest voices in fashion and beauty photography since the 1990s. The self-taught artist from Los Angeles has crafted an unmistakable visual signature: hyper-stylized female bodies, saturated colors, provocative details, and deliberate irony. Her sultry and polished aesthetic dares to question the social expectations regarding femininity with an almost pop audacity. Rather than simply depicting beauty, Donna Trope deconstructs it, rebuilds it, and pushes it to the brink of hyperreality.

Published not only in Vogue, i-D, Interview and The Face, she has also collaborated with fashion houses such as Givenchy, Dior, and more recently, with the brand Skims. It’s fair to say that she captures the essence of the contemporary woman in all her complexity — both a muse, a warrior, and a cultural product.

By flirting with the codes of Hollywood glamour, advertising, and fetishism, Donna Trope plays with the boundaries of good taste only to better redefine them. Rarely consensual, always impactful, her visual works hold a mirror up to the industry – a staged vision of beauty that fascinates as much as it unsettles. With Donna Trope, an image is never neutral. It seduces, provokes, and disturbs, all the while shining with irresistible brillance.

A first exhibition in Paris

Starting on June 6th, 2025, the Carole Lambert Gallery presents POLAROIDS, the first French exhibition devoted to Donna Trope’s previously unseen snapshots. Showcasing over 25,000 pictures taken aside from her editorial shoots, the artist offers raw, intimate, and radiant archives.

Curated in collaboration with Fany Dupêchez, these polaroids capture the essence of a liberated, subversive beauty, oscillating between tension and truth. Twenty years after her work was first featured in Vogue, Carole Lambert pays tribute to a bold and untamed feminine vision. POLAROIDS is a sensory, committed dive into the visual universe of an artist who redefines the codes of image-making. For the occasion, the artist shared her thoughts on five of her polaroids with Numéro.

Introduction by Donna Trope

“Please Note: This was one of our work tools in the pre-digital days… Each Polaroid that I shot brought me closer to the end result. As I’ve said before, these were not the final images, but rather the misses, rough drafts, and solutions to ongoing problems. That’s how we used Polaroids in those days. It was an integral part of the process. A sketchbook, a rough draft… that’s what a Polaroid was.”

“I would shoot on a 5×4″ Sinar camera, using Type 55 Polaroid in black and white. I’ve always worked this way – Polaroids were used to match the end result, which was a colour slide….So I would shoot my rough samples in black and white, to study the light, shadows, composition and style. Every detail counted, and it was a slow process. I see the world in black and white, but I love to shoot in colour. That’s my approach.“

“Each of these Polaroids has a color “twin” to match it. Color was my ultimate goal, my Holy Grail. Everything is different nowadays. Everything moves very fast, everyone sees everything and has an opinion… The mystique is gone. The photographer may be the primary source, but he’s battling to remain the master. It’s become a kind of unwelcome democracy… The pain of creation has disappeared as one image is as good as the next. Magic fades, illusions become visible.“

5 Polaroids by Donna Trope

Girl with a leaf around her face and neck

“Much of my photography is about beauty. Rather than just shooting a beautiful model and making a pretty picture, I’ve become known to play with the suggestion of a concept….something I love to play with, to dive into and go down a rabbit hole.”

“Here I was trying to discuss the evolution of healthy plant based creams. In working towards the final image, I placed the model, Diana, in a sort of greenhouse full of plants: we had exotic orchids and beautiful long grass. Usually the plants are brought in by a prop stylist and no expense spared. I usually try to keep the concept alive by using some of the essential active ingredients in whatever cream we are using. I tried all kinds of ideas from S&M theme tying the girls face up to eating orchids…“

“Only after I had decided what would be the final image did I apply the cream. I would drip it all over Diana’s face and over the plants in order to really make my point. Sometimes the most obvious image is needed to illustrate a subtle theme. This shot was unseen and unpublished. It was taken at the very beginning of my methodical Polaroid journey. The end result was a colour shot made for L’officiel in 2000: Girl with orchid in her mouth and cream dripping down her face.“

Girl with makeup on half of her face

“We shot this series as a complete vision…there was only slight retouching and no editing. We took our time for the hair and makeup, rather than on set. I knew the light I wanted and it was only one shot, one page for Allure Magazine in 2002.“

“This shot here is very similar to the final version. The only change was with the hair and adding some make up. The theme and concept of this shot was about Botox: how it’s not just used to control wrinkles and aging, but emotions as well. It’s a tool used to conceal emotions – no more sweating and no more blushing… Botox gives us power. We no longer have to wear our hearts on our sleeves and we are able to convey the message we like. Emotions are seen as detrimental, especially for power-women playing hardball in the boardroom.“

“In the photograph: the woman of today. Botox is able to keep us calm, collected and unattainable… It’s not easy to spot in black and white, but half of the model’s face is pink, raw, with freckles, very “mother earth” and a tear rolls down her cheek, thus showing emotion! The other half is hard, slick, white skinned, with a tight hairdo, dark eyeliner and deep red lips. Opposites…The soft is how we may feel, the hard is what we want to show. Botox helps us play this game! Thanks to it, no one will ever know what we, women, truly think.  Thank you, Botox!“

Close up on eye with threads

“This was a beauty shoot for Allure Magazine, booked during London Fashion week in 2000. They sent an editor from New York, so I booked the studio… Cut to Monday at 9am, no editor. By 10am, he still wasn’t there and by 11am we were frantically calling all around London hotels trying to track him down. Our models were there and we had no assignment or fashion props or fashion editor! I didn’t even have a brief for the day’s shoot!“

“At noon, we were angry and, rather than give up and send everyone home, we decided to go ahead and shoot whatever came to mind. We improvised: cotton thread on an eye as eyeshadow, medical tape to pull up an eye, vaseline to grease up the eye, bleached and shaved brows and cut out paper shapes on lips and cheeks… Anything to create what we called DIY makeup.“

“The shoot was a creative success, but far from the style of Allure Magazine who rejected the shots. I published the series in a one-off style box set magazine and that was it. However, one year later, Allure decided that they wanted the shots and they made a feature on eye lift surgery – still a topic today and the image has been licensed to use over and over again. The end result was a full circle image and one which has been my most successful archived images.”

Model with paper in her mouth

“Look closely at the paper… It’s a shopping list of diets! Never before had the diet industry been bigger… this was before Ozempic and we relied on diets and liposuction for weight and body.“

“The list includes some famous and controversial diets: Atkins, The South Beach Diet, The Beverly Hills Diet, Slim Fast and more. This was simply made for a section about dieting for Harper’s Bazaar. I loved the simple, yet effective playful shot. She’s got a list of diets and yet she’s so hungry and desperate that she’(s eating the paper itself… Perhaps the ultimate diet – that of fasting.”

Model with black and white hair

“This was an unpublished picture for L’Officiel. It was a story on transformation through contrast. This was one of the very first shots, so it wasn’t well thought out or finished…It just is what it is!“

Donna Trope Polaroids, from June 6 to September 24, 2025, at the Carole Lambert Gallery, 81 Rue du Temple 75003 Paris.