Petra Collins has built a career on a specific kind of provocative delegation. In her latest project, a cover story for *i-D*, the photographer placed the camera in the hands of her younger sister, Anna. It was a reversal of a decade-long dynamic; Anna has modeled for Petra since before either was old enough to drive, their early collaborations eventually migrating from teenage bedrooms to high-end coffee table books and the foundational moodboards of the Tumblr era.
This "big sister energy" is the engine of Collins’s creative output. It is a sensibility that extends beyond blood relations to the generation of pop icons—Selena Gomez, Olivia Rodrigo, and Addison Rae—who have sought her out to define their visual identities. In Collins’s hands, these figures are not merely subjects but participants in a curated, atmospheric lineage. She treats the modern pop star with the same intimate, slightly hazy lens she once reserved for her childhood friends in suburban Canada.
Though she has yet to helm a feature film, Collins operates with the totalizing vision of an auteur. Her work is less about capturing a moment and more about constructing an environment. Comparisons to John Waters or Sofia Coppola are apt; her photographs serve as postcards from a persistent alternate universe where the lighting is perpetually soft and the air is thick with the artifice of a smoke machine.
As she moves further into the role of a world-builder, Collins’s influence suggests a shift in how we consume celebrity. Her aesthetic offers a counter-narrative to the polished, sterile imagery of traditional stardom, replacing it with a dreamlike, collaborative vulnerability. It is a world where the boundary between the photographer and the photographed is intentionally blurred, governed by the intuitive, protective, and often demanding gaze of an older sibling.
With reporting from i-D.
Source · i-D
