Sophie by Camille Vivier

Vivier met Sophie through a casting agent around four years ago. “I was looking for a very athletic woman for a photoshoot,” she recounts. “When I met Sophie, I was not only fascinated by her powerful, sculptural body but I was also drawn to her face which is sweet, feminine and tender. I felt that Sophie had a lot to say through her bodybuilding practice – it is, or at the time was, a reconstruction of herself in both an allegorical and a physical sense.”

Sophie embodies many of the qualities that the photographer seeks to convey through her work: the architectural nature of the bodybuilder’s form encapsulates both the subject and object dynamic that so intrigues Vivier, while simultaneously blurring the boundaries between preconceived notions of femininity and masculinity. “I felt that by reshaping herself with a very intimate, strong and personal motivation to feel good and comfortable with her own image, Sophie was reshaping the criteria of what the feminine body is supposed to be.”