Petra Collins Delves Into the Highs and Lows of Pop Stardom

In 2013, Petra Collins moved from Canada to New York with no money and a single suitcase. She was 20 at the time and already a few years into creating the dreamy, emotive photographs that have become her signature. The artist’s ethereal, hyper-feminine aesthetic—deemed by many as the new female gaze—had an immediate impact. She became a muse to Ryan McGinley and Alessandro Michele, made art for The Tate Modern and The Museum of Modern Art, and helped spur conversations around what modern youth, fantasy, and female interiority can look like.

Now, the 33-year-old multihyphenate is releasing STAR, a Rizzoli book out April 14 that tells the story of fictional pop stars and their most obsessive fans. “It’s an indie film where the budget was from me, and we’re doing five different scenes a day,” says Collins of the creative process. The book follows the rise of two fictional pop groups, Ashley and Siren8, examining their relationships with their most devoted followers, and the impacts of fame.

“This is something I’ve been thinking about for years,” Collins says. “I grew up in the 2000s. That was such a crazy time, when all these pop stars were so sexualized. I feel like we’re in the same space now, but maybe worse.”

The idea came to Collins through multiple avenues. “Music also has always fascinated me as it’s a medium that I obviously don't make,” she says. “I did a shoot a couple years ago [imagining] this pop group and thought, ‘Okay, I need to make this a bigger story.’”

Collaborations with Selena Gomez, Olivia Rodrigo, and Carly Rae Jepsen over the years gave Collins firsthand experience with pop stardom. “I've observed how the public treats these women,” she explains. “STAR is very much what I’ve observed the public be like for years—putting that into the storyline.”

The book was shot in and outside of Tokyo over a two-week period with a group of models playing each character, shooting long into the night. “I went back to the way that I used to shoot as a teenager,” says Collins. “I wanted to be a filmmaker and I wanted to direct, and each photo I was taking was a second from a movie or a tiny bit of a story. At the time, it felt documentarian. The subjects aren’t necessarily real. But I was still capturing them in a way that felt real versus creating imagery that felt fantastical.”

Collins looked to films like Perfect Blue, Love and Pop, Lilya 4-ever, All About Lily Chou-Chou, and Bob Fosse’s All that Jazz for reference. “Being a young woman and being in the spotlight is very difficult,” Collins says. “All these movies are about the voyeurism of that.”

It was important for the book to not bear a singular perspective. “You aren’t sure who’s the author in this story,” she explains. “It could be told from the perspective of Ashley, the main pop star, but it could also be a fan making this up in their head, in their bedroom. That was intentional: I wanted the world to feel a little confusing, where you don’t know what the truth is. There’s an emphasis on the idea of no one authoring this story.”

Collins and her partner, the musician Jake Nadrich, will release a soundtrack for the book in May. “I feel like this is my most cinematic work and narrative work,” she says. “It’s a tiny taste of what my filmmaking will be.”

When asked to elaborate on what’s coming up, Collins said, “I am working on a feature film, and that’s all I can say.”