In 2020, the British photographer Nadia Lee Cohen published her first book Women, and as entailed by the title, it reveals her ambiguous view on modern womanhood. Four years later, on April 5th, 2024, Cohen will release a new “making of” version of the book titled Women, Pirate Edition! in Dover Street Market Ginza, Tokyo, Japan.
As an artist, the work of Nadia Lee Cohen is situated in the middle of pop culture, influenced by cinema, commercials, and Western consumerism. The people she portrays are greater than life, glammed and exaggerated caricatures of society, shedding light on the mundane life under the Californian sun.
On the cover of the new Women, Pirate Edition!, Cohen chose a different route From the original edition's rather simplistic design. The viewer is now immediately intrigued by the vibrating colors and the ridiculously out-proportioned image of none other than Cohen herself, revealing only the bottom half of her body, making the plane flying next to her feel insignificant, and overall setting an exciting tone for the rest of the book.
This time, the new edition has an added eclectic scrapbook style, drowning the inspiration from Japanese magazines and successfully conveying the notion as if the book was an unauthorized copy. It is infused with colorful iconography, striking collages, and a combination of typography in English and Japanese.
“Important and unimportant details...” as described by Cohen, the new edition is a curation of facets that took part in making the original book. From photos and polaroids of inspirations, notes and letters taken by her, and miscellaneous items such as a cassette tape of the British sitcom Thine Blue Line theme song and the next to it the music sheet, a full face of makeup smudged over a wet wipe, and even a visitor map marked with all the famous and infamous spots of Los Angeles. Yet, she kept her known cinematic portraits from the original edition, exploring a dichotomy between glamorous women and their unapologetically exposed naked bodies to the camera.
Following the immense success of the original, Women, Pirate Edition! encompasses iconic saturated imagery with thrilling illustrations and collages that form together a cheeky and notable book, the qualities that became synonymous with Nadia Lee Cohen's work and presumably will lead to another bestseller.
