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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It Could Be A Campaign Photograph.

Texto en español, aqui

 “My relationships with producers or photographers, these are relationships that took years.”

— Alexander McQueen —

“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”

— Karl Lagerfeld — 

Since I’m not like many people in the industry, always avidly looking for the latest news on designers and their collections, there are things that take me by surprise sometimes. My thing is more on the photographic side, and yet, I’m not in one of those times of relentless searching in order to get to know new photographers and their works.

In other words: since I keep myself uninformed, or better yet, I’ve been more focused on text than images lately, there are things that take me aback, for instance: the pictures taken at the very polemic Channel’s runway on a supermarket. I must confess that after seeing its first images on the World Wide Web, I thought they belonged to their latest advertising campaign and not their latest runway. That’s not all, though: I must also confess that I loved those shoots from that very moment. (I’ve loved them so much that even though the event took place weeks ago and is no longer news worth telling, I think reflecting on it is still valid).

After realizing what the pictures were about, my admiration stirred towards a new kind: it is one of the best settings in runaways that I have seen lately, and I don’t mean budget-wise, I mean, it is almost unlimited and it shows not only in the wonderful way the shelves were stocked, but mostly on how they worked out the room; it allowed photographers and cameramen to take shots that were so good that were, in more than one occasion actually, better than those we get to see in different campaigns for fashion brands.

I must clarify that I’m not saying that runway pictures should be used as campaign pictures, although after seeing the quality of some of them, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

The point here for me, is to reflect on the commitment some of the organizers of a runway have in terms of increasing the possibilities for photographers and cameramen of making good images. I think, without a doubt, a runway is an event for the press and the main buyers. However, and this is something not everybody understands, a runaway is not only for the benefit of public relations with the media moguls sitting on the first row; it is also of great importance for the communication that one hopes to achieve. The quality of the photographs taken will be accompanied by the opinions of the fashion editors attending the event. We talked about something similar in a different entry on the blog: the low quality in photographs taken from the first row during a runway. (Link)

I’m sure there are events that will be advertised no matter the quality of the material they are launching. However, not all events qualify to be the exception; and, in many ways, the players within such runaway production will be, without a doubt, hoping to be outstanding and use the media on their favor; and yet, they will need great quality photographs of their event so that it is indeed superior to the media.

One thing is certain; a unique event developed from its early stages in a space and with a production like Channel and other major fashion houses have done differs from event in which everything happens in the same runway, an example of those would be our own runways in Colombiamoda.

Bottom line, the reflection is the same and it’s not new to this blog: sometimes I believe, and I have some first hand information on it by being around such events occasionally, that the runway organizers work under the logic that every person on the press booth is obliged to take the pictures and editors are to publish them as if there weren’t any technical and aesthetic standards to uphold and offer. I usually tell my students on this matter that it’s not the same being chosen by the local media for whom an event is mandatory news as it is being part of the international press, which has the entire world with material available to cover.

To finish, I leave for you, images from another runway, this one from Alexander McQueen F/W 2014 in which the photographs could also be used as a campaign image. At least they are better built than other constructed for this end.

At the end, I don’t it is a coincidence: both brands have an evident culture and great knowledge of how a photographic image works. 

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The Fashion photograph is not just any photograph.

Texto en español, aqui

"[...] The Fashion photograph is not just any photograph, it bears little relation
to the news photograph or to the snapshot, for example: it has its own units
and rules: within photographic communication, it forms a specific language
which no doubt has its own lexicon and syntax, its own banned or approved
“turns of phrase”

— Roland Barthes —

During the latest fashion weeks, I have found in Twitter, with little surprise and relative frequency that fashion bloggers, press members and specialized magazines are publishing in their accounts low-resolution images that inform the world of what was happening during their fashion shows.

To be on the spot, some might say, and they are right. In these times in which people want information at the exact moment when it is happening, it is essential for the media and the success of their social networking sites to be able to comply with such a simple requirement. 

Still, what is going on with the quality of the images? Especially if we take into consideration that these are magazines, which not only provide information to their consumers but also shape their tastes and, given more so, magazines have had a fundamental role in the development of fashion photograph as a contemporary type of language.

A quick message is being delivered, yes, however, by using bad-quality images, the people that watch over the proper way of dressing and its design, those who approve of certain style patterns and, in some cases, are regarded as the guardians of good taste, are undermining the basis of one of the means that they use to communicate fashion themselves.

It is clear that the reason-d’être of fashion magazines is not solely to provide information of the latest trends and the diverse products by designers. Their role, in head of their different editors, is also one of form: of forms orthographic and grammatical, of forms of graphic design, and, even though sometimes it does not look like it, of the ways in which we use photograph to communicate fashion.

Therefore Barthes’ quote; we need to differentiate fashion photograph from its journalistic and runaway versions; the latter also owns fashion magazines its contemporary stylistic value. It is magazines and fashion houses the ones who have taught us which images are good and which ones are not good. This is why we can say that those who are part of the group who has taught us what good fashion images are now giving undoing with one hand what took them years to do with the other.

And yet, there is nothing sacred in fashion. Maybe this is the beginning of a new tendency of blurred images with the focus on the background.

After all, in the fashion world, anything is possible.

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  

___________________________

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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