They Shoot Models, Don’t They?
Fashion photography isn’t just about selling designer dresses, perfume or handbags. With ever-more innovative techniques appearing almost daily, the line between art and commerce has faded, and creative visions are exploding in ads and in editorial layouts.
Today’s fashion photographs are just as likely to feature an attractive llama as a comely young star or to use computers to make a human eerily perfect, or perfectly eerie.
As clothing styles evolve, so does fashion photography, and avant-garde photographers restlessly push the limits.
“One thing about this business, it’s totally based on change,” said Helen Murray, a Los Angeles-based photographers’ representative. “And a lot of it at times is just complete hype.”
That element of change has helped advance the field, whether at the hands of amateurs or professionals. They’re combining new ideas of beauty with computer technology and old-fashioned technique to create previously unattainable photos: Backgrounds can have the texture of fabric, models can fly without the aid of stuntmen and layouts can include pictures of anything but clothing.
So what’s the next trend? Reality. And that doesn’t mean greasy hair and gritty streets.
“It’s getting much more personal now. It’s more about the person,” said Janet Botaish, a photographers’ representative in Los Angeles. “It’s so much healthier for us normal people because you can attain it. You don’t have to be sick-looking or super perfect.”
Some of today’s hot-hot trends:
Celebrity Models
Five years ago, a celebrity posing for a fashion magazine cover generated news. Now if a traditional superstar model earns a Vogue cover, it’s almost as shocking.
Fashion magazines have become another promotional vehicle to advance movie stars, rock musicians and other celebrities. This year’s cover models include everyone from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Jennifer Lopez, Claire Danes, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt.
The trend has transferred significant assignments from fashion specialists to celebrity photographers. Case in point: Annie Leibovitz has landed several Vogue magazine covers--including some featuring noncelebrity fashion models. (In the November Vogue, Leibovitz also scored a 32-page portfolio of shots from her forthcoming book, “Women.”)
The trend has been beneficial for Los Angeles photographers and studios, said Eden Mitry, manager of Smashbox Studios, a popular Culver City location for celebrity photo sessions.
“We’ve grown because the celebrities are here in Los Angeles,” Mitry said. “That’s good news for [aspiring fashion] photographers because they don’t have to live in New York,” where the bulk of fashion photography is done.
Murray agreed. “The worldwide obsession with celebrities right now, which I liken to a beast that can’t be fed enough, has been kind of fabulous for photographers based out here.”
Even smaller fashion magazines, such as the Los Angeles-based Flaunt, are landing celebrities for fashion layouts, giving a career boost to the lesser known photographers used by the magazine.
Trend watchers grumble that the celebrity model trend is destined for burnout, particularly now that hot stars are flooding newsstands.
“I can’t help but think it is going to reach a saturation point,” Murray said. “But that saturation point is not in sight right now.”
Mitry, however, predicted that the public will tire of the same famous faces.
“Whenever there is a new trend,” Mitry said, “it floods everywhere, then it goes back.”
Sexy Models
It’s hard to believe that she ever went away, but the sexy model is back.
“We waited longer than I thought it would take,” said David Schonauer, editor in chief of American Photo magazine. “We waited all through the ‘90s for the sexy models of the ‘80s to come back again.”
Now, their names are as famous as their faces: Heidi Klum, Esther Canadas, Laetitia Casta and Giselle.
“What’s interesting with the return of the sexy model . . . a lot of them aren’t fashion-y fashion models. They are more like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model,” Schonauer said. Many of the models are represented by IMG, an agency better known for developing sports stars.
“Someone had the brilliant idea at IMG in the mid-’90s that nowadays models are no different than sports stars--that fashion is simply another kind of entertainment, as sports is now. So they started luring these models and marketing them as entertainers. This created the buzz that put them on TV shows and at store openings, just like they did with sports stars.”
Art History
Were it not for their wardrobes of Gianni Versace, Prada or Issey Miyake, the models in some fashion photographs could easily have stepped out of historic paintings.
New York photographer Roderick Angle studies the work of Caravaggio, Marcel Duchamp and Baroque period painters to inspire his model poses, backdrops, props and lighting. It’s a style he sometimes calls “future baroque.”
His work follows the seminal Versace campaign shot by Steven Meisel for the fall-winter 1998 season. Murky lighting, period props and centuries-old hairstyles gave Versace designs a new context that was simultaneously modern and ultra, ultra retro.
At another extreme, a current Helmut Lang campaign aligns the Austrian designer’s minimalist aesthetic with the 1980s art photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. The ads feature a single Mapplethorpe photo but no items of Lang’s design. The underlying message: Wear Helmut Lang and show your artistic sophistication.
The attraction to art history settings comes only partly from clothes inspired by earlier centuries.
“I think it has to do with the approach of the 21st century,” Angle said. “It’s very comforting to look to the past.”
Environmental Shots
Flip through a magazine’s pages of Giorgio Armani gowns and Gucci pants and, seemingly out of nowhere, comes a shot of a peasant or a lightbulb, doorway or another nonfashion object.
Photographers and layout artists say they are trying to soften the hard sell of fashion by telling a photographic story.
“To sell clothing, you don’t have to be so literal,” said Ann Richardson, vice president of advertising for Neiman Marcus. “Photographers are looking for a mood and a feeling. It’s not so much every detail or every color.”
Los Angeles photographer Paul Jasmin includes nonfashion images in his layouts because, he said, “It can tell you about the lifestyle of a person in the picture.”
And, just as important--”it breaks the monotony of fashion picture after fashion picture.”
Photo Illustration
With the aid of high-powered computer programs, elaborate set constructions or simple paints and pencils, photographers are altering the reality of their photographs. Leading examples are the surreal Diesel jeans ads by David LaChapelle and the computer-aided fantasies by Peggy Sirota, notably in a Neiman Marcus Art of Fashion campaign.
Riley John-donnell, creative director at Surface magazine, said the trend toward abstract sets, bizarre constructions and fantasy clothes is a reaction to “people being inherently restless with fashion photography.” Fashion shoots have required ever-larger teams of contributors that include set designers, model builders and computer retouching artists in addition to the photographer, fashion stylists and hair and makeup artists.
“When you have so many steps of creative minds, it’s not just about the photographer,” said John-donnell, who predicts that the impersonal imagery is about to end. “I don’t think the teams aren’t important, but the photographers will go back and have their own interaction with the product.”
Some Avant Guardian layouts--from the recent issue highlighting young photographers--illustrate his point: A photograph was crumpled, then reshot to gain an arty effect. Another digital photograph was given a matte finish to match the picture’s subject, a felt dress.
And still others show the best new trend of all: a fresh approach.
