Influential Photographer Petra Collins Shoots Selena Gomez’s Wedding
Singer Selena Gomez chose photographer Petra Collins — whose dreamlike pastel aesthetic and soft-focus film images have become highly influential online — to shoot her wedding.
On Saturday, Gomez announced that she and music producer Benny Blanco had married at Sea Crest Nursery in Santa Barbara, California — sharing a collection of photos and videos on Instagram.
Rather than hiring a traditional wedding photographer, the couple opted for the cinematic photographer Petra Collins to shoot their big day. Collins’ photos capture Gomez, who is the most followed woman on Instagram, in soft-focus Polaroid and film-style frames. She is photographed barefoot on the lawn, smiling while holding her bouquet. Other pastel-toned images show Gomez and Blanco embracing and holding hands.
How Petra Collins Shaped a Generation of Photography
Canadian photographer Collins gained prominence in the early 2010s for her emotionally charged, dreamlike photography shot on film. She has been credited by the Business of Fashion as “leading a new wave of female gaze-led photography. She has also directed music videos, including Gomez’s Fetish and Olivia Rodrigo’s good 4 u and vampire.
Collins’ signature aesthetic, of intimate portraits of women bathed in soft pastel light, has had a major impact on fashion photography and social media images. It has become one of the defining visual styles of the social media era, shaping everything from pinkwashed influencer ads to glittering Instagram and Snapchat filters.
As Artnet notes, Collins’s name has now become a shorthand for a distinct visual style: soft, dreamy focus, hazy colored lighting, and everyday objects like windows or mirrors used in playful ways.
“It might be used aspirationally, or derisively — the vibe you want for your ad campaign, the comparison you want to avoid at your undergrad photo crit,” Artnet writes. “It has come to mean soft, dreamy focus; hazy, colored lighting; windows, phones, mirrors; glitter, flowers, lingerie. It is intimate but somehow surreal. It is nostalgic while still feeling young.”
In 2023, Collins accused director Sam Levinson of copying her distinctive aesthetic for the hit television show Euphoria. She said Levinson contacted her agency before filming, citing inspiration from her photography and inviting her to direct the series. Collins reportedly moved to Los Angeles and worked on Euphoria for about five months before HBO dismissed her for being “too young.” She said she was devastated to see what she considered an identical replication of her work appear in the show a year later.
