Martin Parr & Nadia Lee Cohen, Julie Bullard (2025)12 Images
We can never know which encounters will make the biggest impression on us, changing the course of our lives. When we’re young, we’re especially porous and susceptible to the influence of others, our neurological pathways are forming, and when we meet someone who lights up our brain circuitry, that light can keep flickering our whole lives.
Photographer Nadia Lee Cohen can pinpoint two significant meetings which fundamentally altered how she saw and understood the world. The first was Julie Bullard, who babysat for Cohen when she was five or six years old. Bullard sparked an early curiosity with the mores and mystique of feminine glamour. Embodying the height of small-town Essex 1990s chic, the young babysitter was, for Cohen, a “catalyst” for her subsequent fascination with the theatrical aesthetic of high glamour she has since become renowned for playfully yet reverentially depicting in her work.
Another seminal encounter was with the work of Martin Parr when she found a book of his photography in her college library. Not only did Parr’s images resonate on some profound level with Cohen’s reality, they actually shaped and codified the way she envisaged the world in her mind’s eye everafter.
Now, a new book, Julie Bullard (published by IDEA), brings together these three figures in a fictional homage to its eponymous heroine. Recreating scenes from imagination and memory, Cohen plays Bullard in a series of vignettes shot by Parr, from family meals to weddings, hanging out the washing and other portraits of domestic life. Unlike the real Julie Bullard – who is alive and well, thank goodness – Cohen’s story concludes with her protagonist’s death. The book features shots of Cohen lying out in a casket. After shooting, the cast and crew – mostly made up of Cohen’s friends and family – ate the funeral buffet for lunch.
There’s a clear resonance between Cohen and Parr – their humour, theatricality, curiosity and eye for people’s idiosyncrasies, as well as a certain similar poignant note to their portraits. They both share a literacy of the semiotics of clothes and style, how people present themselves and telegraph their cultural and social allegiences. While Parr looks to the world around him to shoot his documentary photography, Cohen is known for creating worlds. In this collaboration, Cohen curated each set-up and Parr was given free rein to shoot it as he would a real-life scene unfolding around him. In true Cohen-style, God is in the detail. Her character-building is immaculately replete, right down to the choice of breakfast cereal and wedding canepé.
Below, we chat with Nadia Lee Cohen about her fascination with Julie, her 90s style references, and creating this unique project with Martin Parr.
Nadia, congratulations on the book! I’m so fascinated by the whole concept. Please tell us what captured your imagination about Julie Bullard and why she made such a big impression?
Nadia Lee Cohen: Julie was the first person who made me aware of the importance of physical appearance. I had grown up really not caring about what I looked like, or what anyone else looked like. None of my family were vain, plus we all had dark hair and dark eyes. Julie was blonde, wore makeup and was older and it was really those basic facts that fascinated me.
How old were you when she began babysitting for you? Can you tell us about your relationship?
Nadia Lee Cohen: I think around five or six. She was in her late teens and lived in a semi-detached house in the town I grew up in. I remember being in that house, smelling the perfume, seeing the colourful make-up on the side and generally finding it really exciting to be in a girlish environment (having only a brother as a sibling – who, by the way, fancied Julie and used to hide his toy cars whenever she came over to pick me up). She was very warm, kind, and had the effortless cool of anyone older than my six years.
[Julie] might be the catalyst for my interest in anything related to a glamorous aesthetic. The first blonde who paved the way for all the other blondes
How would you characterise her style? And what/who would you say were her sartorial references?
Nadia Lee Cohen: I’d say it was typical of Essex in the 1990s. Influenced en masse by the Spice Girls, footballers, white shoes, etc.
If you had to make a time capsule of your experience of 90s Britain, what items or artefacts would you include?
Nadia Lee Cohen: I love this question. There’s so much to say, but the Argos Catalogue, my brother’s Eminem CD, that alien slime egg, jelly shoes, a padlocked diary, all Spice Girls paraphernalia, Woolworths pick and mix.
In what tangible ways do you think Julie’s early influence is still in effect? Are there any specific aspects of your taste or aesthetic which are pure Julie?
Nadia Lee Cohen: I actually think she might be the catalyst for my interest in anything related to a glamorous aesthetic. The first blonde who paved the way for all the other blondes.
Please could you tell us about your relationship with Martin Parr’s photography? What first made you fall in love with his work?
Nadia Lee Cohen: I was in the college library and found a book. I can’t remember which one, but I don’t think that matters. It affected me like not much else has. To the extent that I noticed it shifted the way I think, visually. My brain constructs my memories – especially the British ones – like a Martin Parr photograph, whether I like it or not. To think that now there is a book which exists with my and his name on the cover is completely mind-blowing. I’ll never get over it.
My brain constructs my memories – especially the British ones – like a Martin Parr photograph, whether I like it or not
Could you tell us a bit about what it was like working with Martin? And your abiding memories of the shoots?
Nadia Lee Cohen: He knows what he likes and what he doesn’t and that’s it. Zero bullshit. I just constructed the scenarios and set him free to wander around photographing whatever he liked about them. He shoots very quickly, so there’s a lot of energy. Most of the cast was constructed of my closest friends and family members. We had a lot of fun, my best mate Charlie’s mum made the ‘funeral food’, which was our lunch that day. Everyone wrote in the funeral book, but I never saw what they wrote, as it was a rental we had to give back. I guess not knowing makes the death a bit more accurate.
Please tell us a bit about the narrative of the series? And poor Julie’s untimely death?
Nadia Lee Cohen: You know that song ‘Up the Junction’ by Squeeze? I love the storytelling. It sounds like someone sat around my mum and dad’s kitchen table telling us what’s going on with them and gossiping. There’s something really cosy about it. I wanted to make something that felt like a visual representation of listening to that song. Going on a journey of this person’s life and experiencing boredom, normality, passion, heartache, and excitement. Because that’s what my life was, growing up – small world-small town stuff, cosy stuff. The death has nothing to do with Julie and everything to do with me.
Julie Bullard by Nadia Lee Cohen and Martin Parr is published by IDEA and available in a limited edition of 2,500 here now.
