Intimate portraits of inspiring creative women – in pictures

The Mexican artist Hugo Huerta Marin spent seven years photographing and interviewing creative women who span disciplines, nationalities and generations. These candid portraits and insights into the work of women as diverse as Tracey Emin, FKA twigs and Agnès Varda, are published in Portrait of an Artist: Conversations With Trailblazing Creative Women by Prestel

Main image: Yoko Ono, Debbie Harry, Agnes Varda and Tracey Emin. Photograph: Hugo Huerta Marin

Wed 8 Sep 2021 04.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 8 Sep 2021 06.41 EDT

  • Agnès Varda – Paris, 2018

    ‘I am proud to be part of MoMA’s Modern Women catalogue, but, honestly, I’d rather be in the general catalogue. Why do we have to play one game for men and another for women?’ All Photographs: Hugo Huerta Marin

  • FKA twigs – London, 2020

    ‘There are many women throughout history who have embodied female empowerment … we don’t know a lot about them or how much they truly impacted our society.’

  • Tracey Emin – New York, 2015

    ‘My work is about me: It is how I think, how I breathe, how I move, what I witness, what I pay attention to.’

  • Shirin Neshat – New York, 2014

    ‘Iranian people don’t share the same freedom of expression as Americans do, so we are trained to use metaphors and symbols in order to say what we otherwise cannot express.’

  • Debbie Harry – New York, 2021

    ‘The only thing that isn’t about sex is politics. Everything else in the world is about sex: what you listen to, what you read, where you live, who you are with.’

  • Charlotte Gainsbourg – New York, 2020

    ‘The fact that I’m always unsatisfied is perhaps what gives me an appetite.’

  • Carrie Mae Weems – Brooklyn, 2018

    ‘The idea of digging through histories is a deep part of my life, my thinking and my interests.’

  • Orlan – Paris, 2015

    ‘My work questions the status of the body in society through all the political, religious and cultural pressures which fall upon the flesh, especially – but not only – those of women.’

  • Marina Abramović – New York, 2014

    ‘To me, the most radical performance is always the last one.’

  • Yoko Ono – New York, 2016

    ‘You know what? Every person has their own opinion about me and my work, and those are their ideas, not mine. Once I’ve communicated my art, I’ve done my part.’

  • Diane von Fürstenberg – New York, 2017

    ‘I became a designer almost by accident, mostly because I wanted to be independent. But what made me want to design was women. It is still all about the woman.’
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