“Blondes make the best victims. They're
like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”
— Alfred Hitchcook —
Always make the audience suffer as much as
possible.
— Alfred Hitchcook —
There are photographers who know
exactly what they are doing and without a doubt, Steven Meisel is one of them.
In the April issue of Vogue Italy, which we can call his home, he presents us
with an extraordinary editorial called horror
movie. However, when I started checking it out in websites like
fashnberry.com, I noticed he has the most difference in qualification between
the pubic and the editors of the site, by the time I wrote this: 57% and 90%
respectively.
Beyond a shadow of doubt, we’re
not looking at the same thing, and yet, I’m not really surprised; I even found
the result of this qualification after making the decision of writing about
this editorial in particular. It only confirms my first thought about it
needing to be commented on.
This editorial isn’t
traditional; and although it is on the same line of Water and Oil, or State of
Emergency, it isn’t Meisel’s most revolutionary work. It doesn’t apply to
the traditional solutions for a fashion editorial; however, for the visual
solution of the image, it borrows from another genre, in this case, from the
horror and thriller movie genre. Here is where Meisel shines again. It isn’t in
the impeccable making, but in understanding that if you have your theme clear
in your mind, the visual solution can come from anywhere.
Throughout the history of
photography, we have been witness to the enriching of the genre[i] starting from
other photographic genres themselves: journalism, erotic photography, nude
photography and family photography, which have provided fashion photography
with a language to the point that for many, it is hard to determine where one
genre ends and the other begins.
In this case, the photographs
as horror images are perfectly achieved, they do look as photograms from a
horror movie. It only lacked the black and white and the blonde gal (something
I would’ve loved to see) for it to have been part of a Hitchcock film. The
whole idea of literally copying from the classical images of the genre is not
necessary. The similarity to The Shining
(Kubrick, 1980) is clear and though I can’t remember the other examples, I know
I have seen them before.
This is fundamental when we
create images within a specific genre: they have to look similar to something
we have already seen, in that way we make it easier for the spectator to
understand it. That’s how fashion photos are similar among them and only those
who know the genre to perfection can change the rules and present us with
something new, even at the risk of not being understood by the public.
Just the way Meisel did with
his horror story.
P.S: Right before publishing this entry, I found a couple of articles about the editorial (link), in which it is seen as a minimal view of domestic violence. If we are to go on following this line of thought, then we'd have to say about the horror genre that it inspires the editorial, but it's not the editorial itself. I believe, and I put my foot down here, that the editorial was misunderstood. I also don't think that this is the genre to talk about domestic violence.
[i] Talking about classifying
images in terms of genres seems obsolete to many, still, I consider that it is
still fundamental when we talk about constructing an image more so at times
when a lot of the aesthetic proposal has a strong component coming from
crossing limits and re-contextualizing its use.
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