4 Projects Inspired by the Films

In honor of May 4th, aka Star Wars Day, we take a look back at a few photography series inspired by the films that defined a generation. Dig into this collection of Star Wars photography featuring Wookiees, stormtroopers, R2D2, Darth Vader, and more.

To the unknowing passerby, Charlie might seem like a regular little boy, without any special abilities; his mother, the Los Angeles-based photographer Ashly Stohl knows better. Charlie began dressing as “Charth Vader” at age four, when he built himself a costume out of an astronaut helmet and blanket cape. Over the years, she’s seen him morph into the character, creating a fantasy world entirely his own.

“This is how the world was to me when I was young,” says Toronto-based photographer Thomas Dagg of his series Star Wars, an arresting homage to his own childhood. In his hushed, monochromatic world, we discover Star Destroyers, AT-ATs, and the Rebel Insignia peppering the Canadian landscape, imbuing daily life with a potent sense of anticipation and the promise of the unknown.

For three generations now, the Wookiee has come to represent the wonder of childhood, igniting a burning nostalgia in the hearts of all Star Wars fans. What if, like Han Solo, we people of 21st-century could hang out with a Wookiee companion in our daily lives? Photographer Mako Miyamoto images such a world with the help of a Wookiee mask, in worn by friends and family.

When the photographer Daniel Picard goes about his daily life, he’s not only thinking about the real world; he’s thinking about the Death Star, Gotham City, and Superman’s Metropolis. For the photographer Daniel Picard, mundane rituals like riding the elevator or visiting the loo don’t have to be tedious. Instead, they’re opportunities to imagine what Star Wars characters are doing when we’re not looking. Figures & Statues, an ongoing series published as Figure Fantasy, is his investigation of the ordinary experiences that every fictional character must at some point or another have to face.