Clémence Polès
passerby
Founder
Founder
︎ Conversation: Interviewing Interviewers
passerby is an online magazine and community that celebrates women through intimate portraits, curated recommendations, and more. Miyako Bellizzi, Haley Nahman, and Beverly Nguyen are just some who have been featured, however it is difficult to define the kind of woman that belongs on there — “every woman is a passerby woman”.
Clémence Polès, a creative director, photographer, and curator based in New York City, founded passerby due to her growing curiosity of the women that passed her by, from her subway seat neighbour to those she passed on the sidewalk. Since then, she’s also co-founded FFFest, a non-profit film festival that celebrates women in film.
A respite from reels and the like, passerby offers “a rare space for reflection on an increasingly busy internet”. Here we ask Clémence about how they continue to lean on intentionality against the relentless speed of consumption these days.
And yet, passerby continues to evolve. If you have been following them for a while, you’ll know they have even gotten a name change. Read on for how the project outgrew its name, their approach to capturing intimate portraits, and why it’s important we celebrate every kind of woman.
This conversation is part of Interviewing Interviewers, a series stemmed from a curiosity of “what would it be like to, for once, interview those who interview others?”. The series will feature writers and journalists in creative and business realms, and beyond.
Hi Clémence, can you share why the name change from passerbuys to passerby?
I started passerbuys (PB) in 2015 as a shoppable street style site. Over the years, it evolved into something much different, outgrowing its name.
PB is still about turning our attention to those that ‘pass us by’, rather than those that dominate the media, but the shopping component was no longer at the core of the project. Quite frankly, we are constantly pushed to purchase, and I wanted to steer away from that.
You started out doing everything for passerby (PB), from conducting the interviews to photography and web design. In today’s creative landscape, what do you think about being a specialist or generalist? Do you see one as favourable to the other?
If I could have had it my way, I would have outsourced everything. There is so much talent out there, and it can be quite frustrating when your skill set doesn’t match your vision. I did everything simply because there wasn’t a viable alternative.
At the time, I was waitressing full-time and couldn’t afford to get a website built, nor get a photographer for each profile – I had to learn those skills myself and make peace with it.
I don’t have any regrets, as I learned a lot; it helped me become a better producer, and discover a new passion for photography. To be a specialist or a generalist? At the end of the day, it depends on the level of perfection you strive for.
You also have a deep interest in film — how do you think that informs your work for PB?
I wouldn’t say films necessarily inform our work for PB, but everyone on the team is a cinephile, so our love of film definitely makes its way into our editorial. However, PB has definitely informed my approach to film outside of it. Back in 2018, I co-founded a non-profit film festival, FFFest, that spotlights and celebrates women in film, elevating filmmakers we don’t hear from enough.
You put forward that PB provides a rare space for reflection on the internet. How would you say you intentionally carve out this space, and what would you like readers to take away?
There’s a tenderness to our interviews, we approach them with a deep curiosity that goes beyond accolades or credentials. Fact is, we admire women, and are in constant awe of them. Through our intimate portraits, we hope that readers will reflect on their relationships with women; how they look at them, how to listen to them, and most importantly, what they can learn from them. Under patriarchy, we often dismiss other women, or perceive them as threats. By having more of these stories, we are better equipped to challenge those norms.
As a proponent for authentic and intimate storytelling, how do you view the role of an editor in conveying these?
I think our photos do a lot of that storytelling, so much so that our photoshoots inform our interviews. Our approach has always been to make our interviewees feel as comfortable as possible, and to present them in a way that closely reflects how they see and describe themselves.
What would you say is PB’s approach towards celebrating diversity and inclusivity in terms of profiles, stories, and tastes?
From the beginning, celebrating women has been our core mission — and that’s always meant women from many backgrounds and countries, resisting how easy it would have been for us to simply interview white women from the New York media world. But in recent years, we’ve also been pushing to be more diverse in terms of class.
What are your views on consumption as a marker of identity?
My curiosity lies in how people live, and therefore what they surround themselves with, but my intention is not to define them by what they consume, nor make it a model.
What’s one thing that you thought you knew at the beginning of starting PB that you now understand differently?
Going into PB, I thought I would meet women who out-navigated all the extreme expectations that were set on them, but over the years I’ve discovered quite the opposite, how ungentle women can be with themselves. I understood that we had greater responsibility in how we portrayed the women we met, and how important (and often difficult) it was to break away from an aspirational lens.
In today’s world where there is abundant of media, like Tiktok, Instagram reels and podcasts, how do you view the appetite for the written word and specifically, long-form interviews?
Our attention spans are not the same, that’s for sure, and in a capitalist society like the US, time proves more and more to be a luxury. My education was always pro-critical thinking, and so the written word, or long-form writing, is something I value. I’d like to think there will always be an appetite for it.
Now for a round of rapid fire questions... What’s a question that has shifted your worldview?
“What if you stopped drinking coffee?"
And a question or doubt you have that unsettles you?
“Will the next generation be able to build community rather than perform it?”
Out of curiosity, if you could be any object, what would you be?
An obvious answer, but I would most likely be a film camera.
Lastly, who’s an interviewer whose works you enjoy, and why?
New York Magazine’s Lookbook series. It takes a lot of work bringing people who’ve never been interviewed before out of their shell - as I’ve learned with PB - and they do such a good job at doing it every time.