From cows drinking to Maison Margiela bags full of eggs: Julia et Vincent's dreamlike photography

“80s French erotic movies, Julia’s mum’s addiction to the colour purple, Gianni Versace, Gérard Depardieu, Showgirl by Paul Verhoeven and, especially, our everyday life,” respond creative duo Julia et Vincent when asked what it is that inspires their pastel, dreamlike aesthetic. Based in Paris, the pair’s practice spans photography, art direction and moving image.

Across interiors, portraits and still lives, Julia and Vincent have developed a recognisable quality in their images, one full of soft focus, glints of light and candy-floss style colours. “Creating dreamlike stories is our main goal,” they tell It’s Nice That, “we try to bring life to characters from our own imagination, staging them with banal items and situations.”

This approach to both their surroundings and personal experiences is at the core of the duo’s latest project Le Grand Est. “The concept was simple: bring elements from our visual universe to locations and situations linked with our youth in Eastern France.” Throughout the book, which is designed by Jeff Pag images zig-zag through juxtapositions from rural scenes of cows drinking from a trough to stylised images of Maison Margiela bags overflowing with eggs.

By pairing ordinary scenes with an element of fantasy, Julia and Vincent “enlighten and sublimate a subject which would have stayed in the dark otherwise.” Le Grand Est features their friends and family, the houses they grew up in, but also recreates fading recollections. By turning these into images, Julia and Vincent have created a tangible object that weaves and combines the narratives of their past and present lives, all with their signature pink glow.