With ‘Star’, Petra Collins expands her visual universe into speculative pop fiction, exploring fame, identity, and digital obsession in a new book published this April by Rizzoli.
After ‘Coming of Age’ and ‘Discharge’, Petra Collins deepens her exploration of contemporary femininity through a project that shifts from documentation to construction. Published by Rizzoli International Publications, ‘Star’ is not conceived as a traditional monograph but as a fully articulated fictional universe. Collins builds an entire pop mythology from scratch, blending photography, narrative fragments, and archival aesthetics into a story that feels disturbingly plausible.
At the center are two invented music acts. Ashley is a sensitive student discovered during a school performance and absorbed into the machinery of global stardom. Siren8 is a glossy teen idol group engineered for bubblegum appeal. Across five chapters, staged performances and backstage scenes intertwine with letters, diary entries, and online forum threads, forming what resembles a fan-built archive attempting to reconstruct a disappearance.
Ashley becomes the emotional axis of the book. As her fame intensifies, her sense of self fractures. Manipulation, isolation, and dissociation shape her trajectory until she turns into an unsettling absence. Around her orbit different forms of fandom: the loyal friend correcting misinformation anonymously online, the obsessive researcher compiling viral timelines, and the admirer whose devotion shifts toward violence.
Drawing on early 2000s celebrity culture, the book reflects on how young female stars are manufactured, consumed, and rewritten by their audiences. Photography becomes narrative architecture, and celebrity emerges as fiction shaped as much by fans as by the industry itself.
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