The supermodel Coco Rocha is known for her ability to strike a pose – and has compiled a coffee-table book of 1,000 photos titled, Study of Pose, with photographer Steven Sebring.
But she says this ability wasn’t always appreciated.
Her modelling career began with catalogue work in Asia.
“You can do up to 25 to 75 photos per day,” she says. “To get the job, you go to these castings and you pretty much do a pose-off – so think of vogueing, but by a 15-year-old girl who doesn’t know anything about movement doing it.
“And the client would say: ‘OK, today is sexy pose or today is natural. Today is cutesy pose.’ And you do whatever you think that is. You have a minute to do it.”
When she moved to New York, people thought she was overzealous with her posing, but it made her different and later she was appreciated – “for the most part”, she says.
“There were definitely some people going: ‘What are you doing? This is so wrong and weird’.” she said. “But, thankfully, there were some people at the beginning of my career that said: ‘No, that’s so cool, that’s so great. Continue doing that.’”
Rocha, 26, has been on the cover of Vogue, W and Harper's Bazaar, and she's walked the runway for Oscar de la Renta and Jean Paul Gaultier. She's also landed ad campaigns for Versace, Zac Posen and Yves Saint Laurent.
A book of poses seemed like a natural next step for her.
“We definitely hit many different genres,” she says. “[In] three days, we actually finished the whole book.”
Rocha hopes the message people take from the book is that it is OK to have fun in front of the camera.
“It’s definitely good to have a personality when you take photos, especially [because] we’re in a time where we’re documenting everything,” she says.
“And we’re a little insecure about how we look, so we think we have to turn a certain way, put our chin up a certain way. For me, I’m trying to tell people you can be goofy, you can be fun.”
• Study of Pose is available now on Amazon
