About fashion stylists

Texto en español, aqui.

“Essentially what you’re doing is collaborating with the photographer to create an image that reflects the fashion you’re trying to capture and also hold a mirror  up to the zeitgeist at the moment.”

— Hamish Bowles —

The manifestation of the specialization of team members has historically been the result of the process of consolidating fashion photography and its professionalization. They assume the different tasks involved in the construction of a fashion image in the terms that this blog formulates in its name—The Constructed Moment.

Some authors, in their records, tell about how during the first fashion sessions, the models would do their own make up and prepare their garments. From this we can only assume that the first members of a shooting, back then, were the photographer and the model.

I still haven’t been able to properly document how the new pieces of this set up came to happen (and I’m grateful for any information any of you can give me). Asking other people about the topic for this entry [1], they tell me that hairdressers used to have recognition above make-up artists—and most likely, a little bit of more participation during the early stages of a shooting— as for the make-up artists, I believe that images in color had to generate the pressing need of incorporating a professional; someone responsible of making the skins of the models give a perfect registry on magazines.

As I understand, stylists also join shootings as the ones responsible for garments in a simultaneous way to make up artists. The acknowledgement of this task was consolidated by Vogue (led by Anna Wintour) when they published credits over the images on the magazine. In fact, magazines like i-D and Dazed advanced this process in the 80s and consolidated it in the 90s by naming the stylist as a part of the team that made the photographic content of the magazine a reality.

Nowadays, we can say that a minimal photo shooting has a photographer, a model, a make-up artists and or a hairdresser and last, yet more frequent and essential, a stylist. 

I say a ‘minimal photo shooting’ because it’s almost impossible to currently find a photo shooting that doesn’t have a stylist. In terms of fashion, the stylist is like the conductor of an orchestra. He or she is the one that interprets the sheet music in front of them, this understood in terms of fashion. Another way to confirm the importance of this role is by observing the prominence of some people in the industry: Polly Mellen, Grace Coddington, Giovanna Battaglia, Nicola Formichetti, Emmanuelle Alt, Anna Dello Russo and Edward Enninful, just to mention a few. These stylists share the same level of recognition as many of the most prestigious photographers, magazine’s editors, designers in the fashion world.

A good stylist is capable of giving a new vision to garments.

It is a common issue in fashion that brands, beyond the imaginary scenarios they produce, question the new meaning their products will elicit once under the editorial approach of photography. This contrast comes from the fear to misunderstand the message the brand wants to deliver; I personally think that there is no reason for the mistrust. If we are strategic for a moment, both brand and magazine will bond when there is a common target: they share the same audience; hence, they have to share some characteristics. When the target public of a magazine is not the same as the brand’s then, it could also be understood as an opportunity to reach a new audience. Another important fact is that an editorial leaves little room to be interpreted as a language for the published brands, since it is already a clear concept announced on the header.

A brand needs to know that a loan of garments means recognition by giving credit to the products. This can be convenient at times, and yet sometimes, it could be wiser not to do so, which led me to reflect about giving proper credit in magazines. A couple of months ago, while I was reading a magazine, and being impressed by some style I saw, I looked for the credits to know who had created it and was surprised by realizing there wasn’t any. The name of the make-up artist was there, but not the stylist’s.

To the magazines which are not yet giving proper credit to stylists, I’m telling you, it’s time to acknowledge this part of evolution in the industry. It is fundamental to do it, since this person, in the case of the best, is interpreting fashion and is capable of reading the aesthetic sensitivity of the ultimate consumer, who is the at the end of the day, the spectator of the constructed images.

[1] in conversations with William Cruz and Laura Echavarria

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Two Tales in One

Texto en español, aqui.

“As an addict to white backgrounds as I am, I find it bizarre that a gray background is never described as empty. It is hard to avoid that the graphic elements take control when using a white background. It is very difficult to give emotional content to something so intensely graphic and potentially cartoony that is overpowered by the rigid background; that is why its importance and the challenge it presents.”

— Richard Avedon —

“Sacred cows make out the best burgers”.

 — Rober Kriegel, David Brandt —

Much has been said about fashion editorials: they present trends, their origin goes back to photojournalism used as news photography in magazines such as Vu or Life, which are a means of expression for designers, stylists, make-up artists and photographers. In the same way, we talk about a minimum of pages, never less than 6 and 10 in average, without being obliged to stick to that number.

It is also clear that an editorial is not a collection of pictures about the same garment, and I wanted to bring this to everyone’s attention because in the past few days, as I was checking up sites where they receive editorials to publish, it caught my attention that many of them had notes about this, which got me to think that it is a common mistake they see in the material they receive for their consideration.

The fact that editorials present a trend sounds to me right in a general way, however, in a way, I think an editorial speaks about a series of garments put together by a common theme; trends can be the most recurrent of concepts but it can also be designers, a specific type of attire or silhouette, an everyday situation or any other concept that a fashion editor considers valid and communicable to put together.

Another thing that I consider is clear is that a fashion editorial or a history of fashion, the name you want to give it doesn’t matter, is the number one piece in the union of photography and fashion, or better put, of fashion photography. It is because of the abovementioned that a big part of the history of fashion has been taken into consideration from the photos published as magazine editorials and the photos that have been used as advertising get less attention.

Speaking of the photographic content, an editorial is, without a doubt, the format in which the style of photographers is best shown. They are the most creative and also the most repetitive; we have to say it, sometimes, at least in the photographic sense, you have seen every photographer in the world after seeing one or two of their editorials. We also have to say that not every photographer responds to a defined style when it comes to making their editorials, Patrick Demarchelier is an example of this. In his perfect way of executing and his conservative elements within fashion photography, he doesn’t have a degree of definition that would allow people to identify him in the same way people can identify some of his colleagues.

An editorial doesn’t only answer to the photographer’s aesthetic needs. It mainly responds to the needs of the means that publishes it. This is a line that is harder to perceive since it conveys different elements of photographic style, and styling besides having a limited access to rejected material and the reasons for not being published. A couple of examples of these are the documentary September Issue in the Unseen Vogue book.

An editorial converges not only a vision of fashion and a need for communication, but also a vision of what is photographic. These three elements come together to make an editorial come to life.

What is interesting about what I just mentioned is that if the first two elements are clear, the third can be handled freely; which means that it can work on any photographic concept without being unarticulated and it allows their development. This is why the language of photography has been able to evolve so freely. If we take a look at the photos that fashion photography has given us and keeping into consideration that the need for communication has evolved very little, we can see that apart from fashion itself —garments, make up, hair styles and even poses— the other big evolution is in the photographic sense; in the way of telling a story, its visual resources, its different contexts and its structure.

Just to be clear here, fashion history isn’t obliged to have a narrative per sei as its name suggests. It does tell a story but it’s not a story telling of facts, which is valid to use, but is not found very often. There’s always a conducting thread, well, there are two actually, fashion and photography, which is in most cases, an aesthetic proposal.

Let’s analyze the use of space. I have always found it particular that nobody complains about how repetitive space can become in photos taken in a studio. The same background doesn’t seem to bother anyone and becomes an attractive element instead, which makes relevant the quote by Richard Avedon that I used to start this entry a valid reflection.

However, when a real space becomes repetitive in several photographs, there’s always someone that thinks that the editorial lacks structure. And when you expresses the intention of making an editorial in two spaces that won’t necessary have a common theme, then you’re told that it cannot be done, as if the only option to make use of space within a photographic production and specifically in an editorial, means to go around in the location looking for different angles.

Well, today I want to bring to your attention two editorials (see below [1]). My purpose is to demonstrate that the aforementioned is indeed possible and to make a stronger statement, both are part of the Spanish Vogue Magazine from March 2014. Take a look at how not only the solution of space repeats itself, but also how the other space shares the story. In the White Masai, color is assigned to one of the spaces and black and white is assigned to the other. This isn’t mandatory as we can see in the other editorial in which it simply doesn’t take place. In the same way, the space of the window is repetitive and it’s not bad whatsoever.

And this is a must: since it is Vogue the one publishing it, it is now a legitimate solution.

May this be the moment to remind everybody that fashion photography has art as one of its inspiring sources and current art is about repetition; it repeats its ways relentlessly, or to the point where you can’t take it anymore. It’s your choice.

[1] I publish here the two editorials I mentioned. They are distributed in the same way as in the magazine, which I think is also important.

THE WHITE MASAI

Photographer: Cuneyt Akeroglu

Stylist: Belén Antolín

Hair: Angelo Seminara

Make-up: Lisa Aldridge

Model: Arizona Muse

 

 

 

 

 

MINIMUM EXPRESSION

Photographer: Miguel Reveriego

Stylist: Belén Antolín

Hair: Tamara MacNaughton

Make-up: Serge Hodonou

Model: Jessica Miller

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A happy horror story.

Texto en español, aqui.

 “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. 

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[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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Of baudelaire, Steven Klein and photoshop

Texto en español, aqui.

"As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. I do not believe, or at least I do not wish to believe, in the absolute success of such a brutish conspiracy, in which, as in all others, one finds both fools and knaves; but I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contrib­uted much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce."

"Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally. It is time, then, for it to return to its true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and arts— but the very humble servant, like printing or shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature."

— Charles Baudelaire  — 

There are tons of writings about photoshop, and there will be more in the future, it really came to stay in the same way other photography innovations do, and the point of discussion will always be the way we use it. Being one of the main topics for this discussions: it’s function in the new perspective about the conception of our own body. In an age where transformations not only come to life at virtual space but at operating rooms too. But That’s not the topic of this entry, let’s continue

I personally think that photoshop is a tool in the same way a camera is, but clearly we can produce photographic images without them as Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy proved that in their moment with the photograms.

László Moholy-Nagy

Man Ray

It makes of the camera, our main active, in a single tool and if we can say that about the camera, we also can say that about other devices, in conclusion it becomes a tool in service of image creation. It is necessary to clarify, because we don’t want to generate bad interpretations, because to create any kind of photography we will need to use the respective tools.

In the relationship of photographers with photoshop we can conclude that there are three types: in the first place we will find those who doesn’t want to use it, don’t need it o they just can’t use it because some technic, personal or professional reasons. In second place those who use it as a tool that can correct, modify or maybe add especial characteristics to their images but with they work they show that it’s not a necessary resource; in other words they really see it as a tool that can be used according to necessities. In the third and last place, those who need it as a dependence for their photographic results, without this tool they can’t realize their images. Those who are located in this category are object of professional bullying, and it is just because all of us that really appreciate the old school and think that a photographer is done by the camera and not bay the computer; in the same way in the past they thought and artist was that who had a manual ability was it pictorial or sculptural and because of that photographers  were replicators of reality using the device called camera and they couldn’t be artists in any way. In other terms it creates a similar discussion of which they had in the ends of 19^th century which is illustrated in the beginning of this entry.

All this in modern terms let us call photographers to any person who uses a photographic tool and there is included photoshop, even I think it is necessary to show that sometimes what I have described as the third category of photographers more than a photography what we see is a digital illustration, what stablishes a different tag but in any moment loses its validity, it is not exclusion, it is a definition in an age where definitions are not important. In the same way there were some painters who worked over a  photographⁱ, and they don’t lost their name of painters to be called photographers.

¿and how does Steven klein come into this trip? Simple: for me he is an excellent example of a photographer who uses photoshop as a tool, going to a point in his appropriation that let him use it as an identifier of his work. In other words photoshop in some of his works is not hidden but it is an important part of the final process of the image, of the sensation it transmits.

In klein we can appreciate a decanted world of human conflicts that in a generalized way can become in violence, sex and decadency. These things show him superior than other actual photographers, because we have to recognize that the topic is not exclusively from him but he has created a proper way to present it; even more when he uses it to illustrate fashion editorials, because his finishing touch in images of which we are talking about are more visible in this photographs than in the ones used for advertisement for the great brands he works. A particular quote for our job where final touches full of photoshop in advertising images are the rule.

Klein is a photographer of contrasts, and are these contrasts in color or black and white which every time we see his images are more accented going to the recurrent application of “final touch in his photos” what we can describe as a veiled something dirt that because of its frequency let me talk about an appropriation of this for his work, going to a point that let me identify him between other finishing touches more generalized in the mean.

Let’s see:

2008 10 Vogue It - THE HONORABLE DAPHNE GUINNESS

2010 03 Vogue It - RIE

2011 03 Vogue US -  LADY BE GOOD

2011 09 Vogue It -A POINT OF VIEW 

2012 01 Vogue US - VICE VERSA 

2012 03 Interview INSTITUTIONAL WHITE 

2012 03 W Mag - GOOD KATE, BAD KATE

2012 09 Vogue US - SPACE ODYSSEY 

2012 09 W Mag - SUPER LINDA 

2012 09 W Mag - SUPER LINDA  

2013 01 Vogue US - HOTHOUSE FLOWERS

2013 01 Vogue-US -HOTHOUSE-FLOWERS 

2013 03 Interview -WILD AT HEART

2013 03 Vogue US - ON THE PROWL

2013 09 Interview  NEW ORDER 

The sensation that this images transmit since their finishing touch is about a contradictory world: luxurious but without splendor, vibrant but without brightness demoralized but with hope. As I already told you that klein is a photographer of contrasts and with content in many cases, because most of his works are not limited to be present us fashion but also illustrate us the people who wears it. There is a proposition and a critique at the same time. Something happens at the complicated world of Steven klein.

After all, going back to Baudelaire’s spirit — overtaken by history but not by our own spirits — now it will be fun to keep commenting about photographers who can’t work without photoshop. As I told you is kind of a professional bullying, because some of them can’t claim to us to use the cameras at less they declare they are illustrators

Did you see?: that’s what steven klein talks about with his photos: he shows us worthy but with a dark spirit, miserable but well dressed, humans but in decadence, in the end as miserable as those who commit bullying to their own workmates  

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i Coming in some cases to use the image not only as a referent , but as an impression over the canvas we’re going to use to make a painting

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