Cover Girl of 1998 / Ciara & Self Service Magazine

In the summer of 1998 I was working in London. On a sunny late afternoon i went to the ICA on the Mall, just off Trafalgar Square, to look at art books and magazines and was happy to find the new issue of Self Service Magazine. It had the, by now iconic, photo by Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm on the cover, which i thought was a nice thing, because I had just had gotten to know them in the spring of that year at a photo shoot for a Japanese magazine and I later met them again at the Festival de la Mode in Hyères.
I couldn't wait to start looking closer and go page by page, so I sat down in the evening sun on the cool marble steps of a monument, in the park just across from the ICA. As i was leafing through and relished my fresh-from-the-press copy, a group of women passed by. They appeared to have been on a shopping trip and they seemed to be related; two mothers, apparently sisters, and a bunch of cousins. I looked up, when one of them said: "That's her on the cover!'
I must have looked rather puzzled, not knowing whom she meant. Then I discovered a shy girl amongst them. It was undoubtedly the same girl that looked at me from the Self Service cover.

Her proud nieces pushed her forward. One of them, pointing at my camera, said "Take a picture. No one will believe you when you tell this at home!"

Ciara, London, august 1998 - photo mfk

Ciara, London, august 1998 - photo mfk

Ciara, London, august 1998 - photo mfk

Anuschka Blommers / Niels Schumm - Self Service Class of 1998, Ciara