DC For Xmas

The cosplay shoot: DC For Xmas

Six Christmas photographs set in an interior arranged as a bedroom, with a white sofa-bed at the centre, mint green and pale blue walls dotted with red baubles, silver garlands, streamers and small lit bulbs. Across the floor and the mattress lie mounds of white wadding imitating snow, holly branches with red berries, white and magenta gift boxes with ribbons and bows, a candy-cane shaped sign reading "Santa Stop Here", and framed prints hanging on the wall.

The palette stays tight: red, white and pink against the cool green of the background, with areas where the light turns magenta and others where it slides towards green. In several frames the foregrounds are crossed by out-of-focus circles of light coming from the tree and the bulb strings, and in one image an iridescent streak cuts across the lower edge of the frame.

The subjects are nanami and Silvia Minella, in red lace lingerie, Santa hats with fur trim, fishnets and white stay-up stockings, wigs in different colours. In the group shots the figures spread across the sofa on three levels, one standing, one seated and one lying in the foreground, and the eye moves from one to the other as in a scene caught halfway through a game. Their attitudes read as relaxed and frontal, with weight resting on the knees, arms raised, hands holding the sign or a wrapped box.

The single shots isolate the two presences: one figure propped on her hands on the white bed, in an almost saturated pink light; another stretched out among the wadding with her head towards the lens, red hair mixing with the leaves; and a close portrait in which a string of coloured bulbs hangs between her fingers, while the pale back of the other's head appears blurred in the foreground.