“A family album preserves only carefully selected photographs. Out of an entire life, it stores only handpicked moments, privileging special occasions, displaying only happy moments. It tends to underline a group’s social links, to highlight a shared life.

None of this figures in She: instead of a chronology, time is stopped. There is no group photo or desire to stage a collective destiny, only isolated models and individuals who do not seem to communicate amongst themselves; no happy moments or picturesque places, only indifferent moments in ordinary places. The models pose, but reservedly, often without looking into the camera. And even when we do see their faces, we don’t really seem to see them.

When we close the book and think a bit about it, we cannot but see She as the anti-family album par excellence.”

— Quentin Bajac, chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art