Fashion Flip Book: behind the scenes experience in VR

New York-based, award-winning portrait and fashion photographer Agata Serge decided to swap her art supplies for a camera at a young age, teaching herself the fundamentals of photography. In 2016, she began her master’s degree in photography and soon became well-published worldwide. Fast-forward 10 years and Agata can be found behind the camera, photographing some of the world’s biggest names in culture and there’s no stopping when it comes to pushing her creativity further.

Here she takes us behind the scenes of her Fashion Flip Book project in which brought together analogue and digital spheres in new ways.

From the very beginning, I knew Fashion Flip Book wouldn’t exist only as a book. The project is deeply analogue: everything was shot on film, printed by hand in the darkroom, and carefully sequenced as a physical object. But while creating it I was also documenting the entire process with the idea of building a VR experience alongside it.

The two grew together, but they serve very different roles. The book holds the final photographs: edited, selected, and fixed in time. The VR captures everything that surrounds those images: the movement, the atmosphere on set, the conversations, the pauses between shots, and the small adjustments that happen just before the shutter clicks.

It shows the part of photography that usually disappears.

Fashion photography is almost always experienced as a finished frame. You see the image once it already exists, but you rarely see how it came into being. For me, the VR layer became a way to open that process to the viewer. Instead of standing in front of a photograph, you step into the environment where it was created. You see the models moving, the light being shaped, the team working together, and the rhythm of the shoot as it unfolds.

During the shoots in New York, London, Los Angeles and Paris, we approached production with this in mind from the start. The analogue photography remained fully focused on the still image, while at the same time we captured spatial video material using Canon’s VR system designed for immersive storytelling. This allowed us to document the space around the photograph in a way that could later be experienced in VR. It meant thinking differently about the environment - not only about the frame itself, but about the space, the movement, and the atmosphere surrounding it.

Turning that material into a VR experience required a completely different approach to storytelling. Using Canon’s immersive capture technology, we were able to record the shoots in spatial video, allowing the viewer to later step directly into the environment where the images were created.

Together with Profirst, who led the creative assembly and technical integration, we shaped how the viewer moves through that space – where their attention goes, how close they feel to the subjects, and how the rhythm of the environment unfolds. For me it was important that the spatial video did not try to imitate the book. The book is tactile and still. VR is spatial and immersive. They are connected, but they exist as two different ways of experiencing the same project.

The VR experience was presented exclusively and only during the Paris exhibition. It was designed as an experience that can only be discovered within the physical exhibition space. At its core, the project explores how analogue craft and digital technology can coexist without competing with each other.

The book remains physical, slow, and tactile, while the VR layer opens the space around the images and allows viewers to step inside the moment of their creation.

Canon’s immersive imaging technology made this possible, allowing the project to move from an analogue photographic process into a spatial digital experience while preserving the integrity and atmosphere of the original shoots.

Agata’s credit list includes:

Creative Direction, DOP: Agata Serge

VR Montage, Art Direction, Creative Production and Visual Content of Fashion Flip Book Launches and Exhibitions Worldwide: Profirst

Equipment & Technical Support: Canon Europe & Canon Poland

Fashion Flip Book Art Director: Federigo Gabellieri

Author of the Opening Essay: Alessia Glaviano

Fashion Flip Book Casting: Piergiorgio Del Moro, Agata Serge, Sheri Chiu

Paris Exhibition Art Direction and Creative Production: Sophie Gaten and Profirst

Lead Photographer for Opening Nights: Dorota Szulc