What Is Xay One?
Xay One
What IsXay One?
The work, the material, and the art of captivity.
What is Xay One?
Xay One is a body of fine art latex photography by Raymond Larum and Evie Fayé, working at the intersection of fashion, contemporary art and lifestyle. It began as a personal exploration of an unconventional material — latex — and grew into an archive with a single subject running through it: the fragile balance between control and surrender, where silence speaks louder than words and vulnerability becomes an unspoken strength. That subject is what the work calls the art of captivity.
Why latex?
Latex is an unforgiving material to photograph. It reads as a mirror before it reads as a garment: every light in the room comes back at you, and the shape underneath disappears behind the reflection of the shape. Learning it meant unlearning most of what works on fabric. But what kept the work going was never the material itself — it was what latex does to the person wearing it. It changes posture. It changes breath. It makes the wearer aware of the edge of their own body in a way ordinary clothing never does, and a camera sees that awareness long before it sees the latex.
Is any of it candid?
Nothing here is candid. Every frame is built — lit, fitted, rehearsed, and shot again. The stillness in these pictures is worked for, not caught. That is the part people tend to get backwards about this kind of photography: the control is not the opposite of the vulnerability, it is what makes the vulnerability safe enough to show.
Who makes the work?
Xay One is made by Raymond Larum and Evie Fayé, together with models, artists and performers who share a passion for bold, authentic self-expression. The range runs from editorial high fashion to intimate lifestyle and conceptual art. A shoot only works when the person in front of the camera decides it does — everything else, the lighting, the polish, the retouching, is in service of a decision that is not the photographer’s to make.
Where can I see the work?
The albums hold the photographic series, the journal follows the ideas and the stories behind the shoots, and membership opens the full archive. Everything on Xay One belongs to the same ongoing study — and the best pictures in it are the ones where someone chose to be seen.