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TEXTS ON FASHION

ON FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY

FAR NOT ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS, NO MATTER HOW ADVANCED AND CONTEXT-SENSITIVE THEY ARE, CAN THEORIZE ABOUT THEIR CRAFT. ALEXEY NIKISHIN IS ONE OF THOSE FEW. HE HAS DESCRIBED MAJOR TRENDS AND DRIVERS IN MODERN FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY.

Today, fashion photography is at the forefront of the photographic art. If you can photograph it, you can photograph anything. Fashion speaks many visual languages. The most popular ones are realism and magical realism. The main artistic devices are colour and style.

DIRECT UTTERANCE

Realism and snapshot spring from amateur photography and follow its rules: they document a fact, or an event. The photographer seems to be unaware about composition and artistic devices: the foreground and the background are both sharply defined, and the focal point is in the centre. Such an image is a direct utterance: it means nothing else but what is shown on it. If a photo depicts Kim Kardashian's buttocks, it is literally about how cool Kim Kardashian's buttocks are.

GLOVE-BOX CAMERAS

The visual language of our time is largely predetermined with technical means. Amateur photography appeared along with point-and-shoot (P&S) cameras in the nineties. Everyone used these "glove-box" cameras and thought that this is the way photos should be taken. Today everyone is using phones. Thus, the concept of a photo has charged. Moreover, filters and processing are now left behind: there should be little or no adjustment.

Photo: Pieter Hugo (1-3), Wolfgang Tillmans (4-6)

NO PHOTOGRAPHY SKILL

The classical master of snapshot and mother of modern photography Nan Goldin has no photography skill at all. She used to photograph on a film P&S which required only pressing a button.

Today she is photographing magazine covers on a big Nikon, in the auto mode as before; and, still, her works look up-to-date. Do you recall a Gucci campaign by Martin Parr? It is the same snapshot, but a different one, a perfect one. The style is the same; technical tools are new.

Photo: Jürgen Taller

Gucci Cruise 2019. Photo: Martin Parr

MODERN TECHNICAL TOOLS ALLOW ANYONE TO PRODUCE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTO: JUST GET A BIG PROFESSIONAL CAMERA AND TURN ON THE AUTO MODE. AT LEAST IT WORKS OUT FOR NAN GOLDIN WHO MADE A MAGAZINE COVER WITH HARI NEF FOR CANDY

PURGED OF ARTIFICIALITY

Contemporary photography seeks to be purged of artificiality and entertainment, of fine art that inundated magazines throughout the 00s. Today we look back and think: "Why did it have to be so pompous?" Photo shoots used to be about "what cool life we want to live"; now they are about "how we actually live". With realism, fashion photography has reached the edge. What is going to be next? How much more simple and natural could it be?

THE EARLY PETER HUGO WAS A FINE ART ARTIST, BUT FOR SOME REASON HE DID NOT TURN TO MAGICAL REALISM. HIS PHOTO SETS FOR RE-EDITION IS REALISM, ENTERTAINING, YET TOUGH

MAGICAL REALISM

Magical realism derived from fine art photography. It gets its "pomposity" through colour which can only be captured on film. And since it is captured on film, it is real. This makes colour an essential artistic devices of magical realism. Look at artworks by Katya Turkina and Emmie America: what a subtle soft palette! No digital camera will reproduce it.

Photo: Ryan McGinley (1-2), Petra Collins (3-4), Turkina Faso (5-7), Viviane Sassen (8)

PURE BEAUTY

Photoshop has nothing to do with this colour; it is a magic RAW-film scanner followed by a special processing program that results into this incredible beauty. And it is a pure creativity. In case of digital camera, light can be adjusted through the settings applicable to the entire photo set. In film photography, frames have to be edited manually one-by-one.

THE RUSSIAN WEDDING PHOTO SHOOT BY EMMIE AMERICA FOR NUMÉRO IS A PURE BEAUTY. THE COLOUR IS VERY GOOD. EMMIE ADMITS THAT IT CAN BE ACHIEVED ONLY WITH FILM

STRONG SHOT

Recently I understood that it is not only models and clothes, but also an overall framing of a scene that is important. Today stylists / photographers have to consider it. It is relevant to fashion, as well as any other field of photography. If you can produce a strong shot, you do a great job; otherwise, it is not worth it. Think of Martin Parr: he knows how to frame a scene right.

Photo: Jürgen Taller

Of course, there have always been composition and light. We used to apply various artistic devices to make a beautiful shot. Today there is only one artistic device, and that is style within the frame, when all details perfectly match and all colours nicely blend together, so that it seems almost a coincidence that a model in beige is captured on a harmonious background. There is no way to do without it today. So, the tasks of the photographer have expanded significantly.

In this regard, a vivid example is Katya Turkina Faso who has a really good taste. She takes photos of people stylishly dressed in bad clothes in the trash surroundings, and it looks cool. It is not overly trendy, but it is classy and up-to-date. It is the aesthetics that everyone expects from her.

Style is a distinctive feature of Juergen Teller. He has his own vision and does not need anyone at all. And even if someone helps him during a photo shoot, it never goes beyond assistance.

An ideal situation is when you work with a like-minded stylist who can cover you up if necessary. There have been cases when due to differences in our vision, a stylist and I could not pull on together. I do not want to go through this ever again. An artist should be with a team comfortable to work with. I guess Helmut Newton and his wife knew that very well. She always attended photo sessions and, therefore, could recommend something from an outside point of view, directly or indirectly contributing to the final result.

TWENTY-YEAR-OLDS

To remain up-to-date, one should constantly monitor what is going on. Culture is changing at a mad pace, and the wider your visual erudition is, the better you can grasp emerging trends. When you ask someone to list favourite photographers and hear well-known time-tested names, you immediately know who you are dealing with. Every day Emmie America receives 50 messages with a request to become her assistant. She asks applicants what master they like most, and the common answer is Peter Lindbergh…

I MAINLY PHOTOGRAPH CHAVS, SO I AM INTERESTED IN MOVIES ABOUT YOUTH AND ITS AESTHETICS. THIS IS ENGLAND, TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, TAXI DRIVER, CRUISING, AND CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, ALL OF THESE ARE ALL WELL-DIRECTED AND STYLISH ARTWORKS. I ALSO ADORE JARMUSCH'S THE LIMITS OF CONTROL AND ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE SURVIVE. ACTUALLY, I WOULD RECOMMEND THEMATIC REVIEWS BY ANOTHER MAGAZINE: THEY OFFER REALLY GOOD FILM COMPILATIONS

Photo: Sharna Osborne

FASHION MAGAZINE, LIKE ARENA HOMME PLUS AND RE-EDITION, AS WELL AS OTHER MEDIA ON CONTEMPORARY CULTURE, ARE ALL ABOUT THE YOUTH. AND THE REASON IS THAT CONTEMPORARY CULTURE IS CREATED BY TWENTY-YEAR-OLDS. IN A DECADE, THEY WILL BE REPLACED BY TODAY'S TEN-YEAR-OLDS. LET'S TAKE HIPPIES: WE LOVE THOSE YOUNGSTERS WHO SHAPED THAT CULTURE IN THE SIXTIES, NOT THE OLD CHAPS THEY HAVE BECOME

TEXT BY TANYA TRETYAKOVA