For years EJ Major was fascinated by a series of mug shots of an anonymous drug addict published in the women's magazine 'Marie Claire'. Re-staging the photographs and using herself as subject, Major recreated this visual chronicle of decay. The resulting series, entitled Marie Claire RIP, has become Major’s most exhibited work, with over 10 shows throughout the world and serves ‘as an entry point for thinking about photographic practices that foster specific notions of normalcy and beauty’, says Catherine Somzé.

    In the limited edition book-set, Marie Claire RIP is accompanied by a set of graphic masks, by-products of the signature work and published for the first time under the title Jezebel. As Somzé puts it, ‘the viewer is encouraged to enjoy the expressive qualities of the Jezebel images in their own right. Their softness, reference to the female face and to feminine beauty, as well as to everyday female enhancement techniques, vies with darker suggestions of witchcraft and death-masks. However, it might be a pity not to shed the light of Marie Claire RIP on them, and vice versa. Whereas the Jezebel series tells the invisible story of the making of Marie Claire RIP, the latter becomes, in Jezebel’s light, a reflection on media technology and its role in creating the realistic myths of contemporary photographic imagery.‘