Fairytales: Petra Collins and Alexa Demie

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Still, both Demie and Collins tried to steer clear of anything too specific or literal in their interpretations, describing the main impetus for the project as simply an opportunity to build their own weird and wonderful folkloric world—and, as Demie already noted, just to have some fun. It was super cathartic because I hadn’t created artwork since my last book, and there was a real sense of discovery where we were just playing.

Petra and Alexa's chapters of elves, mermaids, sirens, water sprites, fallen angels, fairies, witches, and banshees blend their own stories with retold fairy tales. Fairy Tales is] a collaboration with the photographer Petra Collins -- a body of work that reimagines the female creatures who inhabit folk- and fairy-tales, who are often cast as one-dimensional monsters or temptresses.The stories by themselves are quite one-dimensional, but completely come to life with the photography. In the Brothers Grimm version of Rapunzel, it’s hinted that the young woman has been locked away in a tower for her promiscuity, while the 17th-century Italian version of Sleeping Beauty sees the central character impregnated by the king during her slumber.

As children growing up with these stories, they can often be extremely sexualized, even if it’s surrealistic. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Petra posted a photograph of a fairy, and I wrote to her and said, ‘I want to be a fairy,’ and she was like, ‘Well, let’s make you a fairy,’” Demie says of the origins of their friendship, laughing. Here, their subversive folk tales are brought to vivid life via handwritten stories the pair worked on together, alongside illustrations by artist Evita Flores and art director Sandra Leko’s gloriously whimsical pastel pink layouts.

For both Collins and Demie, the project was rooted in the darker corners of the fairy tales that they grew up with. Fairy Tales’s cast of banshees and sprites and fallen angels may appear to have been tied up or subjugated by a villain, but look a little closer and you’ll notice that the mermaid has bound herself up in shibari ropes or the sirens are, in fact, sliding down stripper poles under the eerie spotlights of a seedy nightclub. Petra Collins is a multi-talented artist and director whose photography set the stylistic tone for much of the 2010s. In 2021, the Fairy Tales photo teasers featured almost empty diners, bedrooms and hospitals; readers blending fact and fiction could imagine these scenarios coming to life in front of them. It felt half-baked, stories obviously being made up afterwards in an attempt to form some sort of narrative for each photo series in each chapter.