Babestation, Pat Butcher, extreme bodies, and BDSM: these are just some touchpoints of Rosie Marks’ visceral practice. The London-based photographer is captivated by women, particularly how beauty culture infiltrates and influences every corner of our psyche, unravelling ideas about status, socioeconomics, age, and taste.

Beauty is more than just a theme for Marks, it’s a way to examine the macro and micro of politics and culture. Her work – which moves between photography and film – is never simply a document of her collaborators but rather a mode of nuanced storytelling that offers more questions than answers.

Despite always taking pictures, photography wasn’t initially at the forefront of Marks’ mind when picking a career. She tried studying fashion communication but dropped out after a few months. Marks then started interning at An0ther Magazine in London, splitting her time between the fashion cupboard and returning designer clothes.

On these long bus and tube journeys between Old Street and Soho, she started making her first body of work, observing passengers as they went about their day. This work on public transport became her first book, 08.14-10.19′, 526 caught images that explore ideas about romance, style, and technology through the traditional ethos of street photography.

Marks cut her teeth making work on the street, often unbeknown to her subjects. While her approach has evolved – though holding onto the candid and caught feeling her previous work evoked – she’s disappointed with where the genre is heading. “I think it’s a little bit depressing the way that documentary photography is changing and how everything like that is now considered an invasion of privacy,” says Marks. “There are elements of the shift that I agree with, but it’s become quite extreme. We’re all a bit scared of being cancelled,” she laughs. “I think the world is better for seeing real-life documents, past and present.”

I feel like I’m perpetuating some of the problematic aspects of the beauty industry. I’m aware of that, and my personal work, in some ways, offers a counterpoint to this

After her stint at An0ther, Marks began working for Tyrone Lebon as a studio manager/assistant. She credits the experience with grounding her work with the critical business skills needed to make it viable. Since then, she has cultivated a character-driven documentary practice that traverses portraiture and fashion, collaborating with Martine Rose, Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, the New York Times, and Double magazine while retaining her distinct visual language.

Inspired by Anthony Hernandez’s book Rodeo Drive – which captured images of women on the streets of Beverly Hills in the 1980s – and her 90s upbringing in Chiswick, Marks’ second book Pretty Hurts, published by Hysteric Glamour, is a visual essay about contemporary beauty and the relentless search for betterment, no matter the cost.

“Beauty culture has shaped me in so many ways, especially growing up with social media – you can’t escape it,” explains Marks, who’s been making work on the topic for the last five years. “Working in fashion, I feel like I’m perpetuating some of the problematic aspects of the beauty industry. I’m aware of that, and my personal work, in some ways, offers a counterpoint to this.”

Shot between the US and the UK, Pretty Hurts includes 11 vignettes. A story about a Liverpool-based ex-BabeStation model-turned-aesthetician specialising in Russian Lips (a lip filler technique that produces a subtle heart shape) operating from her bedroom sits next to images of pageants, facial modification trade shows, The Golden Age of Hollywood, Paris Hilton and a Madonna lookalike who supplies human tables for events. The work is niche, but familiar, conjuring an uncomfortable and dizzying reflection of western beauty standards and how extreme beauty is quickly becoming the new normal.

I love just turning up to someone’s place, spending time with someone, and falling into their world

In 2021, Marks continued to build upon these themes in a new project about extreme bodies in Los Angeles. Her protagonist, Allegra, who is in her mid 50s, lives in Orange County, has eight kids and grew up Mormon, started modifying her body surgically eight years ago in order to have huge breasts.

Marks found Allegra through an Instagram meme in which she played classical piano in a ‘sexy’ dress, and has been spending time with her in Los Angeles on and off for the last three years. The result is an intimate fly-on-the-wall documentary – which started as photography, but recently pivoted to film – capturing Allegra as she shifts between the mundanity of everyday life and the extreme body she is crafting through surgery.

“I originally was drawn to Allegra because she has this sort of family life and very sort of normal existence outside of her extreme body. She’s open and free with her sexuality, or at least is giving it out to the world. And that’s something that I feel like I don’t have, and I don’t want what she has, but I do. I don’t know; there was something to it.

“The story feels weirdly accurate, reflecting today’s world and where we’re heading. This obsession with the body, fear of ageing, and how we operate in such polarising directions. It was a magnified version of what I’d seen in towns across England.”

In addition to her personal work, editorial assignments have been a generative space for Marks, offering a way to connect people and ideas at the fringes of culture worldwide. She’s photographed everything from the BDSM scene in Tokyo and the stars of PetTube to Hollywood’s most high-profile divorce lawyers and package holidays for millennials.

In her recent story on Heidi Fleiss – the infamous former madam who ran an upscale prostitution ring based in Los Angeles – for Richardson Magazine, we see Marks’ approach begin to evolve. While the images of Fleiss embody the raw and unfiltered energy we’ve come to expect from the photographer, they also offer a complexity in composition and emotion that feels cinematic in tone.

“Shooting Heidi was one of those days that made me feel like I’m in the right industry,” Mark says about the shoot. “I love just turning up to someone’s place, spending time with someone, and falling into their world.”

Fleiss rescues the birds and allows them to live uncaged at her ranch in Nevada. “Twenty-five macaws were screeching like crying babies, flying at me while I tried to work. It was complete chaos, but I’ve realised I thrive in those conditions.”

@marksrosie