Photographer Megan Winstone is on a mission to make women confident with their body and sexuality
This is A HOT MINUTE WITH, a quick-fire interview series championing all the rising talent catapulting into fashion, art and music’s fickle stratosphere. From pinch-me moments to bad dates and even worse chat-up lines, think of it as an overindulgent conversation – like the ones you have in sticky club toilets at 4.A.M. Except these guests don’t regret the overshare…
Courtesy of @meganwinstonephoto
NAME MEGAN WINSTONE
AGE 26
STAR SIGN Leo
LOCKDOWN LOCATION Cardiff, South Wales
LIFE MANTRA Don’t be pathetic.
“I’m on a mission to make women comfortable and confident with their body and sexuality,” shares punkish photographer and self-proclaimed ‘sometimes’ model, Megan Winstone. Using the swollen hills, flashy fish & chips shops and dirty nights of her native Wales (“Wales and its people are so humble and accommodating however brutally honest and will tell you what’s what”) as tantalising backdrops, she continually flips preconceived notions of womanhood on their bare arse. “Hopefully young women can feel a sense of belonging in my vision,” she muses. Winstone’s raw portraits, often immortalising her own naked flesh and her friends’ impish adventures, radiate with the same brittle candour found in Nan Goldin’s early stuff. “My photography is very personal to me and there is always an element of influence from me with whomever I’m photographing,” she explains. “Whether it’s changing the sitter’s posture or boosting their confidence with a fierce facial expression.”
Rules are only there to be vigorously slashed out and re-written for Winstone. Even better, definitions and demarcations would no longer exist. Stereotypes would be outlawed. Discrimination dead and buried. “What I’ve worked really hard towards is accepting that I can live in South Wales and embrace my heritage within this industry. There is a major buzz to move to London in order to be successful. Covid has proven that you can be anywhere in the world and still get that shoot done,” she says, emphasising how designers making the conscious effort to design for larger sizes, a tangible goal: “the demand for more sizes is prominent.”
But until then, what’s next for Megan Winstone? “A secret project is about to come out very soon….. keep your eyes peeled!”
Ella Bardsley: Behind the camera or in front of it?
Megan Winstone: BOTH!
EB: What’s been the biggest ‘pinch me’ moment in your career so far?
MW: So many! Modelling for DAVID SIMS definitely.
EB: Name your favourite local pub, regular order, and who you’d go with if you could pick any celebrity, dead or alive.
MW: The Robin Hood, Canton. Double G&T, and OMG I would take David Bowie for a pint.
EB: Biggest regret in life?
MW: Not approaching Suzie Quatro at a party.
EB: Earliest childhood memory?
MW: Being in the pram with my sister and watching the rain slide down the plastic cover.
EB: Superpower you’d most like to have?
MW: Time travel.
EB: TV series you’ve binged in lockdown?
MW: The Fall, Gillian Anderson.
EB: The first song I want to hear in a club post-lockdown is…
MW: 4ÆM by GRIMES.
