The Photographer Who Discovered Kate Moss Is Sharing Unseen Photos of Her Work

Stephanie Pfriender Stylander’s fashion and portrait photography has been featured in multiple publications and museum exhibits since the early 1990s, but over the past decade, the New York-born artist and former apprentice of Art Kane has been focused on the unseen parts of her work.

It started with her partnership with the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York City. “This was the first gallery I worked with in the fine art photography market. It was a dream that there was interest in my photography as art to collect,” Stylander told WWD. With the interest, she started digging through “boxes and boxes of negatives, contact sheets, worksheets and 35mm slides” that remained hidden for years. “It is an unusual process. I could be walking down the street, at a dinner, at a film, etc.…and an image comes into my head. Then I go into my archives and find the shoot,” she said.

In 2025, Stylander decided to unveil part of her vast archive while also celebrating highlights of her career with a collection aptly split into two parts: the “Unseen” and “Seen.”

“I was drawn to photography because I am very interested in memory and time. Selecting the ‘Unseen’ imagery speaks to personal change, which feeds those choices. Many of the ‘Seen’ photographs were for clients, so other creative decisions were at play,” Stylander explained.

One of the shoots in Stylander’s “Unseen/Seen” collection shows a young, then-anonymous Kate Moss. “I was home for the holidays, and an editor called from Harper’s Bazaar Uomo and asked me to shoot a love story in New York City. I called a model booker, and they shared: ‘I just received a fax from our London agency of this new girl, there is something there, she is short, but there is something about her.’ I looked at the fax and booked her,” she said. “Kate had a certain quality in her eyes; I could see she was relating to the photographer and the moment. After the shoot was over, I called my roommate in Paris, who was a makeup artist and said, ‘This girl is going to be a star.’ She just had it.”

Moss posed for Pfriender Stylander on the street in front of the Barrymore Theater in 1992. “I had scouted all over the city for the editorial story. I wanted to include a theater because of the type of model she was, more of an actress to me than a model. I did these pictures of her walking the street, and I always had a macro lens because I loved big closeups, and that is where ‘The Face’ [name of photo] was created,” she said. “I loved how she took her finger, pushing it into her face. I told her I wanted ‘kooky’ expressions.”

Stylander’s lenses have also captured images of Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas, Aretha Franklin, Taylor Swift, Björk, Jennifer Lopez and Keith Richards, among others.

“I have my ideas when I am given an assignment to photograph a legend, but I also follow the mood then and there, which may work with my ideas or may not. It is like an art, a weaver — in and out, over and under, until you find something beautiful, something personal, both of them and me,” Stylander said. “With Keith, I wanted to create his environment. We had a very large studio, draped in black, with movie-hot lights, backstage-like furniture, and photo equipment, all to reflect a working stage. With Björk, I didn’t want any atmosphere. She wore her clothes and brought her makeup artist, so with this approach, it was the electric expressions that she would orchestrate. I looked for the devil in an angelic girl.”

Inspired by French New Wave cinema, Stylander’s work marries sensuality and grit, combining her photographs with composites and layouts. “When I was shooting for the fashion magazines in Europe during the ’90s, the magazines were closer to art magazines. There was so much creativity,” she said. “The Italian and French editors loved my layouts, and many of my clients would use them for the editorial. Now, I am continuing the process of layering, but I am working on canvas with phototransfer and mixed media. The process is slow and deliberate, with many imperfections such as leftover fingerprints. Right now, I feel very alive and happy to be playing in the sandbox.”

Stylander’s “Unseen/Seen” collection is available for order at Staley-Wise Gallery and featured on stephaniepfrienderstylander.com.