Sofia Malamute’s Behind the Scenes Is an Intimate Portrait of 2010s Celeb Culture

Close your eyes and think back to 2013. What were the major cultural moments of that time? Indie sleaze, health Goth fashion à la Vetements, and party photography tailor-made for blogs might spring to mind. For Sofia Malamute, the mid-aughts marked the beginning of her prolific career as a fashion photographer—and she captured it all.

Malamute, a native of Argentina, mounted her first professional exhibition at just 15 years old. Four years later, at 19, she moved to New York City to pursue her dream of being a photographer. By 20, she’d been shooting for Prada, Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs, Chanel, and many more brands during fashion weeks. “I did Chanel’s Instagram for two years—that was insane,” Malamute tells me from her home in Buenos Aires, where she’s lived for the past four years. “I had two iPhones. I had the pleasure of flying all around the world with Karl. He’d sit me down next to him during the shows and tell me his ideas.”

Malamute’s proximity to celebs like Pharrell, Kaia Gerber, Kristen Stewart, and Suki Waterhouse developed into close friendships with those stars. Now, the photographer is releasing a book containing B-roll photos she snapped between her gigs in New York, Paris, and Milan on her point-and-shoot camera. Behind the Scenes, out now via Idea Books, is a photo diary-style book with intimate photographs of friends, family, travel, and still-life from Malamute’s personal archive. In the 416-page book, Virgil Abloh, Rihanna, Robert Pattinson, and many more stars appear in lo-fi, relaxed images snapped between 2013 and 2019. “It was kind of my personal work while I was doing my commercial work,” Malamute adds. “I do feel that these pictures were from a [different] generation than the one we’re living right now. We all were so naive and innocent, thinking this era of unconsciousness would last forever.” Of course, 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic changed everything—even fashion, celebrity, and photography culture. “Even the people that appear in the book, how they’re looking at the camera, it’s different from what happens today. Today, people are so self-conscious that a picture could go viral on TikTok and Instagram. There was a different freedom back then.”

Scroll through a selection of the photos featured in Behind the Scenes here.