As his latest book Rude in the Good Way is published, the American photographer talks about collaborating with his partner Lulu Sylbert
This story is taken from the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“The most spark-producing thing for me right now is this magnetism between my girlfriend Lulu and me, and our conversation around the images we’re making. I’ve always had a mix of people in my life with different voices that I trust to edit my work. My new project, Rude in the Good Way, has a few pictures I’ve been taking with Lulu. It’s extremely collaborative – she takes pictures of me too. There is no way these pictures exist without the two of us together – on the bed or in her friend’s backyard with this kid’s soccer net. It’s almost like I’m having to articulate myself to a world, and that world is another person. We’re so invested in what we’re doing that, in a way, it doesn’t really matter if anybody else is. I wouldn’t say it’s all romance and flowers. Lulu and I are turning into a little bit of a monster together. It’s like you just started a band with somebody and you’re trying to relearn how to play a three-chord rock song. There’s discovery and frustration, but when it sounds good, it sounds better than anything else.”
For almost three decades, Roe Ethridge has moved fluidly between fashion and fine art photography, shooting high-octane campaigns for brands including Balenciaga and staging conceptual exhibitions around the world. Across playful portraits, fashion editorials and intimate snapshots from his everyday life, the hyperreal gloss of the American photographer’s digital images is often marred by imperfection: an early self-portrait with a black eye, a still life of fruit transforming into ashen mounds of furry mould. His latest show and book, Rude in the Good Way, pushes his provocative visual experiments further, with Lindsay Lohan in a set-designed spoof of Miami, photographs of John Currin’s pornographic paintings from the early 2000s, and erotic portraits of Ethridge’s partner and collaborator, Lulu Sylbert.
This story features in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue, marking 25 years of AnOther Magazine, on sale now.
