Woman in Mind by Maryam Eisler

Set against the cultural aftershocks of the late 1960s, the ‘’Summer of 69’’ does not attempt to reconstruct history, but rather to evoke its emotional residue - a landscape where personal memory, collective mythology, and visual culture continuously overlap.

Through a cinematic sequence of photographs that move between Saint-Tropez, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach, the work constructs a suspended world where glamour and introspection coexist. Each image operates less as documentation and more as a fragment of feeling - a moment that feels both remembered and dreamt.

In this conversation, we explore how ‘’Summer of 69’’ engages with the enduring power of images: their ability to shape identity, transform memory, and blur the boundaries between authenticity and projection.

CDH Talks: While rooted in a specific historical moment, ‘’Summer of 69’’ appears to transcend chronology, evolving into something closer to a cultural and emotional landscape. What drew you specifically to the symbolic power of 1969?

Maryam Eisler: For me, 1969 is less a year than a state of mind. I wasn’t trying to recreate history. What drew me was its emotional residue. The student uprisings of ’68 and the searing losses of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy left the West questioning everything. Then came ’69, the moon landing, Woodstock, the feeling that humanity could reinvent itself, that new freedoms, including how we express our identity and sensuality, were possible, and of course, let's not forget the iconic song by Serge Gainsbourg '69: Annee Erotique' which he sang with Jane Birkin whom he had just met. All this has always resonated with me because of my own story. I grew up in France before America become my second home.

So this visual language is hybrid. LPs that hummed throughout my youth, films like ‘La Piscine’ and later ‘Emmanuelle’, and even certain magazines like ‘Lui’ and ‘Interview’ for example which have stayed with me as cultural markers of a moment when women’s image and sensuality were also being explored. And then there’s the Americana I’ve fallen in love with, Palm Beach, nostalgia of both the high and the low , poolside Martinis, but also roadside diners… Though photographed in the present, the images echo a laissez-faire spirit, suspended between fantasy and memory, where glamour shimmers on the surface and untold stories quietly unfold beneath.

The work drifts between Saint-Tropez, the Hamptons and Palm Beach because that is the rhythm of my own memory, where history, personal memory, and cultural mythology all converge… The ‘Summer of 69’ is really about how those histories and myths live inside us, merging into a shared emotional landscape that feels both personal and collective, less about a fixed past, more about how memory and imagination keep reshaping freedom.

CDH Talks: What aspects of the ‘’Summer of 69’’ feel surprisingly relevant today?

Maryam Eisler: What makes ‘Summer of 69’ feel so relevant today is that we’re once again living through a moment of profound transition. We inhabit a fragmented, accelerated world, where images have become our primary language and where optimism, beauty and perfection exert an almost irresistible pull. But I’m equally interested in what lies beneath those surfaces.

In many of the images, although everything appears visually perfect, the protagonist is often looking away, absorbed in thought - wondering and wandering at the same time. That ambiguity is intentional. It suggests that beneath every polished façade lies another emotional reality, another possibility. There is always a “what if?” beyond the picture.

In many ways, that feels especially contemporary. We live in an age of carefully curated identities, where social media presents lives that appear endlessly beautiful and fulfilled. Yet we all know that perfection is rarely the whole story. ‘Summer of 69 ‘explores that tension between surface and substance, fantasy and reality, glamour and vulnerability. It asks whether what we’re seeing is real… or whether, like memory itself, it’s something we long to believe. I think that’s precisely why this series resonates with its viewers today.

CDH Talks: Why do you think it continues to resonate across generations?

Maryam Eisler: So why does it resonate? Every generation seems to invent its own 69. For some, it’s memory. For others, it’s discovery, like stumbling on a film still that still glows. The feelings at the core are universal . Desire, freedom, romance, and longing. These aren’t bound to any decade. As some critics of the series have noted, these pictures inhabit that space between cinema and memory.

Between the real and the imagined. I’m not trying to reconstruct the past. I’m building an emotional landscape that people can enter and complete with their own stories. Ultimately, I hope people see not pictures about an era, but reflections on how images, all images, shape who we are and what we long for. Photography has always lived, for me, between what we remember and what we wish we remembered. And if the series nudges people to question that line between fact and fiction, memory and dream, then,hopefully, that’s the kind of resonance I’m seeking to achieve .

CDH Talks: How is the "Summer of 69" received by collectors as a photobook - does its appeal lie primarily in memory and nostalgia, or does it open up something beyond them?

Maryam Eisler: I’m delighted that the photobook has been exceptionally well received by collectors, because I think they recognise that it’s much more than a catalogue of photographs; it’s an object of memory in itself.

The photographs are an amalgamation of digital as well as original Polaroids taken with my beloved SX-70, the same camera my father gave me for my eighth birthday. Polaroids possess a unique emotional presence. Each one is a singular object, carrying the marks of time, touch and imperfection. They already feel like memories before they’ve even had time to become one.

Of course, nostalgia plays a part, but I don’t think that’s ultimately what draws people in. The book was conceived almost like a cinematic sequence, with each image acting as a fragment of a larger emotional narrative. Rather than telling a linear story, it invites the viewer to construct one - to bring their own memories, desires and associations to the experience.

At its heart, ‘Summer of 69’ is an imagined love story that unfolds over the course of a single summer in the Hamptons. It’s a romance that exists somewhere between memory and imagination, between fact and fiction. Like all great summer loves, it is fleeting, imperfect and ultimately ephemeral. Yet perhaps that is precisely why it feels so perfect. Its beauty lies in its intensity, in the potency of a moment that could never last, but whose emotional resonance endures long after the season has ended.

As I wrote in the introduction, these aren’t simply photographs; they’re “soft acts of remembrance.” They inhabit that space where memory and imagination become inseparable, where a summer may never have existed exactly as we remember it, yet somehow feels profoundly true.

Ultimately, I hope collectors respond not only to the beauty of the Polaroids themselves, but to the emotional world they create. The book is less about revisiting the past than about exploring the mysterious way photographs become repositories of identity, longing and shared memory. Summer of ’69 isn’t really about nostalgia - it’s about the enduring power of images to preserve not simply what happened, but what it felt like. That’s where its true emotional life resides.

CDH Talks: What do you expect future generations to take away from these images?

Maryam Eisler: I hope future generations won’t see these simply as pictures of an idealised past, but as an invitation to dream, to feel, and also to imagine the untold stories beneath the surface. Yes, there’s depth about memory and identity. But there’s also a wink and some fun and some colour and a bit of irresistible eye candy. Yes there’s shimmer on the surface, but also quieter stories underneath. I want viewers to think a little deeper and also just enjoy, smile, dream, invent their own ‘what-if’ scenario. After all, that’s part of what keeps art alive.

CDH Talks: Your images are undeniably beautiful. Is there a risk that beauty can soften or even conceal the complexities you're trying to explore?

Maryam Eisler: I think beauty has always been underestimated. We often assume that if something is beautiful, it must also be superficial. I don’t see it that way at all. For me, beauty is an invitation rather than a conclusion. It draws the viewer in, slows them down, and creates the space in which more complex emotions can emerge.

I deliberately use beauty almost as a Trojan horse. The saturated colours, the elegance, the glamour and the sensuality invite you into my image, but if you stay with it a little longer, you’ll notice that something isn’t quite resolved. The protagonist is often looking away, lost in thought, absent from the perfection surrounding her. There is always a quiet tension beneath the polished surface.

That duality has always fascinated me. Life itself is rarely one thing or another. We can experience joy and melancholy, certainty and doubt, desire and loneliness all at once. I want the photographs to hold those contradictions without resolving them.

Ultimately, ‘Summer of 69’ isn’t an exercise in nostalgia or aesthetic perfection. It’s an invitation to dream, to question, to remember, and perhaps even to imagine a life that never quite existed. If beauty is what first catches your eye, I hope curiosity is what keeps you looking.

And yes… I also believe art should give us pleasure. There is room for colour, glamour, humour, a wink and a nod. Sometimes the deepest ideas arrive wearing the most beautiful clothes.