About

Liz Sunshine
Artist & documentary fashion photographer
Melbourne, Australia — Project Est. 2022

Where I started

I grew up on a farm in country New South Wales, far from the fashion industry. My version of Vogue was junk mail catalogues. I would spend hours looking through the pages, imagining the clothes I might one day own and the person I imagined they could help me become.

Looking back, I don't think I was only interested in clothing. I was interested in what clothing represented: identity, possibility, belonging and self-expression.

When I found my way into photography, street fashion immediately captured my attention. Not because of the clothes themselves, but because of the people wearing them. At the time, street style was beginning to shift the conversation away from celebrities and magazine editorials towards everyday people. Individual style mattered. Personal expression mattered. That felt worth documenting.

I may have become a fashion photographer because of clothes, but I stayed because of people.

Over the following decade, I documented thousands of people across Melbourne, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm and beyond, working with clients including Vogue Australia, Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, the NGV and Visit Victoria. Photography became less about documenting clothes and more about understanding the people inside them.

The question that changed everything

By the early 2020s, something had shifted. From the outside, I was living the career I had once imagined. But privately, my relationship with clothing had become increasingly unhealthy. Without realising it, a decade in the fashion industry had left me chasing newness more than creativity.

Then I asked myself a question I couldn't ignore:

Do you have a good relationship with clothes?

My answer was an immediate no.

That question changed everything.

As I began learning more about Australia's contribution to textile waste, I understood the problem wasn't only how much we consume. It was the relationship beneath that consumption. I loved fashion and still do, but I wanted to understand how something capable of bringing so much joy could also create so much pressure, guilt and environmental harm.

In 2022, I founded Our Relationship With Clothes (O.R.W.C.). It wasn't a departure from my photography practice, but a continuation of it. The same curiosity that had led me to document how people dressed became a broader investigation into why we dress the way we do, and what our clothing reveals about ourselves.

A practice built on questions

Today, O.R.W.C. is my ongoing art practice.

Every project begins with a question.

The question becomes research, conversations, photography, writing and experimentation before taking shape as an exhibition. When the exhibition closes, the question remains.

Over the past several years, that process has grown into an expanding body of qualitative research through hundreds of conversations about people's relationships with clothing. Those stories have become both creative material and evidence that these questions are deeply human, reaching far beyond fashion alone.

Rather than offering answers, my work creates space for reflection. I believe some of the most meaningful change begins not with certainty, but with curiosity.

Past projects and current work

12 months of Nothing New

In August 2024, I stepped away from buying new clothes for twelve months as part of the practice. What began as research became something much more personal. It challenged long-held habits, surfaced uncomfortable questions and fundamentally reshaped my relationship with clothing.

That year informed a series of projects that explored consumption, identity and the emotional life of clothing through exhibitions, writing and public engagement.

Current work

I am currently developing a new exhibition, which will launch in the coming weeks. For the latest projects and updates, please visit the Projects page.

Projects

About

This work is for anyone who has ever stood in front of their wardrobe and felt something — joy, frustration, confusion, or like they had nothing to wear. Through art, questions, and the quiet power of soft activism, O.R.W.C. explores what clothes do to us - and how a more positive relationship with what we wear can ripple further than we think. You don't need to have the answers. The questions are the starting point.

- Liz Sunshine

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