In Obscure Objects of Desire, Lisa Saltzman turns her gaze to the world of fashion and design, examining both their formal beauty and their role within a culture of desire and consumption. Drawing on her upbringing within a successful fabric design business, Saltzman approaches clothing as both an aesthetic object and a fetishised, disposable commodity. Through experimental camera techniques that interrupt the viewer’s gaze, she heightens attention to pattern, texture and surface—the fundamental elements of design—while destabilising the visual language of fashion photography.

The series unfolds across retail spaces, streets and the studio, referencing and complicating the conventions of commercial imagery. Alluding to Luis Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, the work reflects Saltzman’s ongoing interest in how desire is constructed within capitalist society, as well as her engagement with modern and abstract art traditions. Echoing early twentieth-century European photography while questioning its utopian optimism, Obscure Objects of Desire invites a more critical awareness of the objects we create, consume and project meaning onto.