If you've ever wondered what it looks like when the glitter settles and the arena goes dark, Petra Collins has been there with a camera. The photographer and director - whose resume reads like a playlist of the last decade's biggest pop moments - has shot portraits of some of music's most untouchable names and directed videos for Olivia Rodrigo, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Cardi B. She has, in short, seen things.
The book that eats pop culture for breakfast
Her latest project is a photo book that leans hard into the dark, glitchy, dramatically over-saturated fantasy of early 2000s pop stardom. Think less red carpet and more backstage fluorescent lighting. Think the aesthetic of a forgotten CD booklet you found under your childhood bed, except elevated into something you'd actually frame.
Collins has spent years orbiting superstardom close enough to understand that it is, at its core, equal parts spectacle and chaos. This book doesn't pretend otherwise. It's less a celebration of fame and more of an honest, slightly unsettling reckoning with what it actually feels like to exist inside that particular machine.
Why the 00s again? Why always the 00s?
Look, we get it - at this point the early 2000s aesthetic is basically its own genre. But Collins earns the reference. She's not doing nostalgia tourism. The grainy textures, the off-kilter compositions, the vaguely eerie femme fantasy of it all - these aren't just vibes for the sake of vibes. They're a visual language for talking about performance, identity, and the very specific kind of pressure that comes with being perceived at pop-star scale.
It's also just genuinely gorgeous to look at, which helps.
A front-row seat to the drama
What makes Collins' perspective worth paying attention to is that she isn't theorising from the outside. She's been in the room, on set, in the tour bus probably. The book, published by Rizzoli, carries that intimacy without turning it into gossip. It's more interested in the feeling of superstardom than in exposing it - which, honestly, is a more interesting choice.
For anyone who grew up gluing pop star posters to their bedroom wall and wondering what was really going on behind those perfectly styled shots, this one's going to hit somewhere uncomfortable and nostalgic at the same time. As reported by Dazed, the full picture story is worth a look.
