The New Forces of Fashion Photography

Fashion imagery is an esthetic unto itself—as much a cultural weathervane as a matter of showcasing garments. And more often than not, fashion images are not so much about the clothing as they are about the mood and the zeitgeist of an age, seen through the viewfinders of some of our most inventive photographic artists (and of course, art directors and stylists).

Photo curator and author Magdalene Keaney catches the spirit of this idea in a spritely and motivational new collection called Fashion Photography Next, which the publisher Thames & Hudson rightly praises as a book that “sets the agenda for fashion photography and innovative image-making in the decade ahead.”

DIGITIZED TALENT, PAPER MEDIUM
Keaney is optimistic about the resiliency of hard-copy periodicals—at least in the fashion arena. To her, they are a kind of hybridization between the venerable institution of print publishing and digital technology. “Contrary to what you might expect,” she writes, “the paper-based magazine, as the primary commissioner of fashion editorial, remains dominant.”

There’s obvious proof in magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, of course, and for the cutting-edge generation of shooters profiled in this book, “new forces” like The Gentlewoman, Ponystep, Under/Current, the Room, Dazed & Confused and Love have popped up.

All these publications maintain separate interactive digital platforms, usually with energetic behind-the-scenes live-action clips and, in Keaney’s words, “a sense of hyperactive energy.” Her implication is that the cyber side of fashion mags might be the big attraction for younger photographers, but it’s the front office of the print edition that still pays the bills.

NEW NAMES ON THE HORIZON
Many of the shooters represented in Fashion Photography Next are emerging talents that most of us probably haven’t heard of, but whose work is showcased here in well-paced, nicely reproduced spreads. The outcome is a cross-section of interesting new talent and a nearly overstocked reservoir of raw, unfettered imagination. Some cases in point:

The look of homegrown experiments is a typical conceit in Tyrone Lebon’s fashion work. Photo © Tyrone Lebon

• Londoner Tyrone Lebon, son of noted British fashion photographer Mark Lebon, prefers a similarly low-tech approach in his fashion assignments, often drawing on the snapshot feel of personal images of his friends and family. Even shots of styled haute couture garments for high-toned clients can emerge in unapologetically realistic situations (one model writhes uncomfortably in a dentist’s chair), or in childlike simplicity, such as the hanging magnifying glass that distorts a subject’s eye (above). Lebon seems to revel in dabbling with photographic anomalies like this, one special favorite being the ragged mis-exposed frame edges of contact sheets.

An image by Julia Hetta for Rodeo magazine, 2011. Author Keaney says Hetta’s models are “often emerging from or receding into dark backgrounds; and [there’s] an overwhelming impression of composure and containment.” Photo © Julia Hetta

• Stockholm-based Julia Hetta uses soft, painterly lighting in her images for a marked aura of tranquility, an effect she calls the image’s “silence.” Hetta’s work is collaborative; she began partnering early in her career with her brother, Hannes Hetta, a former fashion editor at Vogue Hommes International. Together they’ve created a distinct brand that Julia calls “our own language,” and which regularly adorns editorial spreads for Dazed & Confused, Vogue China, The New York Times and ad campaigns for Hermès.

Mel Bles does digital compositing “on the fly” during studio sessions. Photo © Mel Bles

• Another London-based photographer, Mel Bles, is definitively a creature of the digital universe. She’s fond of elaborate manipulations and compositing, some produced in the obvious environment of after-capture, but much of it is done on set as part of her quirky, dynamic workflow. “Mel Bles is a studio photographer,” Keaney writes, “but her images are rarely composed from a single frame.” Her digital handiwork has gained traction among prestigious fashion publications in the U.K. and abroad.

• German photographer Daniel Sannwald is one of the most widely published contemporary fashion photographers and, to Keaney, something of an enigma. His unpredictable photographs, she writes, “often loaded with indecipherable or dreamlike symbols and juxtapositions, escape literal reading or conventional description.” Like his peers, he’s not wedded to strictly digital capture, as in the case of the image chosen for the book’s cover, a simple, playful sight gag shot on analog film.

• Croatia native Bruna Kazinoti loves to distill human faces and bodies into powerful graphic statements, and she works frequently with a traditional 35mm film camera, but her fashion work is totally unconventional. She is, writes the author, “another emerging photographer with little interest in pursuing the dominant esthetic of the fairytale fashion narrative… Kazinoti frequently photographs models from behind, suggesting perhaps a rejection of some of the traditional modes of fashion image-making.”

Keaney takes on another 30 such artists in Fashion Photography Next with 272 powerful samples of their wonderfully original creative output. The result is a rich idea mill that will fire the imagination of every photographer searching for that next “breakout” look in his or her own work.

Also On Our Radar 

The Notion of Family Photographs
by LaToya Ruby Frazier

Interview by Dawoud Bey
Essays by Laura Wexler and Dennis C. Dickerson

This first book by LaToya Ruby Frazier, a Guggenheim Fellow and former photo critic at Yale’s School of Art, is a black-and-white collection with accompanying text detailing the recent history of her family in her small-town birthplace of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Frazier’s story encompasses three generations, beginning with her grandma, Ruby, and weaving through an incisive exploration of racism and small-town decline. She unselfconsciously draws on the tradition of black-and-white documentary photography, enlisting her mother as a collaborator, her “co-author, artist, photographer and subject,” Frazier writes. “I see beauty in all her imperfections and abuse.” She has managed to use this closeness with her family as a tool for defining much broader narratives—the rigors of race and class divisions, as well as the idea of image-making as a transformative act.

Your Family in Pictures: The Parents’ Guide to Photographing Holidays, Family Portraits, and Everyday Life
By Me Ra Koh

On the surface, this book’s simpler tips—“Have Mom wear what she feels most beautiful in,” and, “If you’re taking photos at night without a flash, you’ll need a high ISO to get enough light,” for example—are not exactly revelations to an experienced photographer. Beyond the standard “say cheese” stuff, Me Ra Koh has a flare for creating intimacy (or at least the illusion of it) between her subjects, especially in duos and groups. Like any good photojournalist (this is, after all, a storytelling genre), she has a solid sense of narrative flow. Her shots of kids reacting to each other or to their parents or to off-camera activity are models in this iteration of the photographer’s craft. If you already make some of your living photographing families, this book will bring fresh ideas to the table; and if you haven’t done a lot of family shooting, get this book to be inspired.

Related Links:

The Textbook for a Digital World

Miles of MAC: An Ode to Beauty Portraiture

From Weddings to Fashion Photography: The Nuances of Broadening a Brand