JESSIE LAU

It was a pleasure to be able to photograph Juliet Simms a few times over the last few years and a blessing to hear her perform live. Imagine my utter amazement when I walked in the busiest subway station of my hometown (after all, all my encounters with her happened in Canada) and saw a blown up image of her along with Chinese artist Muma. I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes. The images were too big for me to be sure if it was her. But then I saw the tattoos and I thought this gotta be her but MY GOODNESS THIS IS HUGE (in every sense) — Gap? Annie Leibovitz? Wouldn’t I have heard anything by now? I immediately searched it when I got home, it just so happened that the campaign was launched recently. Since then I have been keeping a look out of her around the city.

(from top to bottom)
1. Hong Kong Central MTR Station
2. Same as above
3. Spread on the Let’s Gap Together campaign on local lifestyle magazine Milk, but somehow Automatic Loveletter became Loverletter instead…
4. Promotional booklet from Gap store! Free huge spreads of the images by Annie Leibovitz (crappy Nokia phone for scale)
5. City Magazine with Ai Wei Wei on cover

I think the Let’s Gap Together campaign is absolutely brilliant with the cross-cultural thing (might also be because I’m a big believer), and Juliet Simms does deserve more recognition outside of North America, at least they need to get some facts straight (fellow snakes, don’t worry, I already notified the magazine via their Facebook page).

A month later and I’m still overwhelming with amazement and pride for her.