Vogue India August 2008 Controversy

[ckashie]

Did they pay the people posing with the luxury goods as they would pay a real model, or at all, does anyone know?

[Style-Addict]

I find it a bit tasteless, but I cant help but be fascinated by that woman holding the bad. She is gorgeous, and I don't think I've seen such a heart-warming full on smile in a long time. Beautiful!

[LetThemEatCake]

Originally Posted by ckashie

Did they pay the people posing with the luxury goods as they would pay a real model, or at all, does anyone know?

I doubt it. I can just imagine the assistants and whomever snatching away the bib off the child's throat, tearing the bag out of the woman's hands, pulling the umbrella from the man. This is a very tacky editorial IMO, even though I do like seeing it on real people instead of mannequins.

I'm never uncomfortable around homeless people I pass (L.A. has more homeless people gathering around even affluent areas as Beverly Hills, Brentwood, etc) on the street. A lot of people are. They dont want to stare into the faces of people who struggle and eat from trash bins and beg for spare change. But they're just regular people, like anybody else.

Interesting choice for a editorial. I dont buy magazines ever anymore, so this was new to me to observe. Thanks.

[MissMagAddict]

source | nytimes

The Post-Materialist | Fashion and Poverty
By Nick Currie

A report from our Berlin correspondent on design and society.


A Jean-François Campos photograph from the August 2008 edition of Vogue India features
a poor Indian family — and a $200 Burberry parasol.

Should poor people appear in fashion shoots for expensive clothing? What’s the difference between a $2 umbrella and a $200 umbrella? What’s the role of a magazine like Vogue in a nation where more than 75% of the population lives on less than $2 a day? Can cheap clothes enhance — even trump — expensive ones? Do couture items look cheap mixed into a poor person’s outfit?

These were some of the questions raised by an article by Heather Timmons in Sunday’s New York Times. Vogue’s Fashion Photos Spark Debate in India described — and showed — a photo shoot by Jean-François Campos which appeared in the August edition of Vogue India.

Since its launch last October, the Indian edition of Vogue has tended to concentrate on glitzy, aspirational images; Western models appear alongside Indian models whose styling (colored contact lenses and lightened skin tones — the subject of another New York Times article) nudges them in the direction of Western norms. Campos’s story — featuring impoverished Indians sporting a Fendi baby bib, a Burberry umbrella and a $10,000 Hermès Birkin bag — departs, provocatively, from that line.


Another provocative image by Jean-François Campos, as seen on the website of his agency.

Glance at his portfolio at creative agency Michele Filomeno and you’ll see that this provocative juxtaposition of luxury and poverty is something of a Campos hallmark. In shot after shot, fashion models and expensive clothes are set against backdrops of urban poverty. Personally, I find the images thought-provoking and beautiful. They free the fashion world from its ivory tower isolation and allow it to circle ethical issues — without forcing any particular conclusions on the viewer. They also raise the question of whether the beautiful artifacts of a traditional culture like India aren’t a match for the most expensive couture. Which raises, in turn, the worrying idea that, by thinking this way, we may be romanticizing (and therefore justifying) poverty.


An image from Martha Rosler’s series Bringing the War Home (2004).

When I wrote about the Vogue India controversy on my own blog, Click Opera, the South African artist Candice Breitz sent me some images by veteran New York artist Martha Rosler. Revisiting Bringing the War Home, a set of Vietnam War-themed images she made between 1967 and 1972, Rosler created a montage series in 2004, which imagined fashion shoots taking place on the streets of Baghdad.

“Assembled from the pages of Life magazine,” Laura Cottingham wrote in an essay, “…Rosler’s montages re-connect two sides of human experience, the war in Vietnam, and the living rooms of America, which have been falsely separated.” The Campos images, with their uncomfortable beauty and ambiguous juxtapositions, may be making the same point about the “false separation” between luxury and poverty — with, perhaps, more seductive subtlety.

[dumbfairy]

Reading the inital blurb I feel like I should feel repulsed by this,but I'm really quite indifferent so far.

The woman with the bag has such an unadultarated smile that makes me wanna smile too

[Crying Diamonds]

Sorry, a Fendi bib?

How disgustingly, decadently nouveau riche.



And how inspiring.

[Uchina]

It makes me sad. Is it supposed to make me sad?

[lollicandy]

Wow. ^It makes me sad too. In the same way the first Vogue China made me feel. I never get a sense of these vogues presenting a more equal style pov. They present very uncomfortable dialogues to the reader.

[Juliette3]

I feel it's wrong that people should feel outraged by what this photographer did. Inspired? yes. The controversy between poor and rich, that is something people should be outraged about and that is exactly what he is portraying by this work.
In my opinion this isn't tasteless or tacky at all.

[sofialuv]

I would like so see more pictures and with more detail.

So far i have mixed feelings about these but personally, i already find some items really ridiculous (like a $200 umbrella or a Fendi bib) and i don´t need to see a poor person holding one to feel/think about that.

[Scott]

honestly,i can understand the sensitivity toward them...i mean you're parading a 4 or 500$ bib and and showing clothes and shoes(prices,which they most likely haven't a clue of,these 'models') that in total are worth more than their homes and their clothes put together....now does that really sound poignant or witty at all? not to me. i think it showcases a sheer superficiality....almost a sense of complete disregard for human suffering. and i highly doubt this had anything less to do with creating a stupid fashion image than actually sending a substantial message. and these next images MMA posted with the article....i feel incredibly disgusted by the last one especially. a model in a gown flanked by a tank and soldiers with machine guns....now where is the beauty in that? it's shameless frivolity just to create a radical 'fashion' image amid despicable unrest and violence against children and women particularly.

[INTER]

I like it very much, I´m so tired of seeing fashion editorials all the same. I think the pictures are beautiful and I love the woman with the umbrella, laughing happily instead of a skinny Eastern model with a sad face like in all f****ng mags all around the world.

[bliss_]

Originally Posted by Spike413

This is just like when Galliano got raked over the coals for doing a collection inspired by the homeless. People, and mind you not the people being depicted but journalists and advocates who aren't living on the streets, were so offended because it was insensitive. Poverty exists all over the world and the main reason people get so worked up about something like this is because it's painful to be reminded of that fact. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to see it.

No one has a problem when fashion adapts the sari into a $2,500 gown, or takes a tiered gypsy skirt and does it in swarovski beaded silk. Everyone can ignore the fact that the clothes are representative of people who live a life of poverty if you dress models in native clothing and photograph them in a real setting. So why is it offensive to portray the actual people instead of an unrealistic fantasy?

I think these people should be proud of the fact that a publication as influential as Vogue decided not to glamourize India but instead saw something beautiful in the reality of India.

And just to clarify, I'm not some super-benevolent activist preaching from my soap box. I'm just as guilty as the next person of passing by homeless people on the streets and making an effort not to see it because it's an uncomfortable reality. That's probably why I appreciate what Vogue India has done.

very well said

[Kamelot]

Originally Posted by Spike413

This is just like when Galliano got raked over the coals for doing a collection inspired by the homeless. People, and mind you not the people being depicted but journalists and advocates who aren't living on the streets, were so offended because it was insensitive. Poverty exists all over the world and the main reason people get so worked up about something like this is because it's painful to be reminded of that fact. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to see it.

No one has a problem when fashion adapts the sari into a $2,500 gown, or takes a tiered gypsy skirt and does it in swarovski beaded silk. Everyone can ignore the fact that the clothes are representative of people who live a life of poverty if you dress models in native clothing and photograph them in a real setting. So why is it offensive to portray the actual people instead of an unrealistic fantasy?

I think these people should be proud of the fact that a publication as influential as Vogue decided not to glamourize India but instead saw something beautiful in the reality of India.

And just to clarify, I'm not some super-benevolent activist preaching from my soap box. I'm just as guilty as the next person of passing by homeless people on the streets and making an effort not to see it because it's an uncomfortable reality. That's probably why I appreciate what Vogue India has done.

I would agree with you if the merit was about whether to show poverty or not, its part of our own society let along developing countries.

However, to use these individuals without even acknowledging their names or even bothering to pay them decent wages is where the ethical lines might have been crossed. Its like the 'Slumdog Millionaire' controversy, using 'extremely' poor slum dwellers as actors (children specifically) without even paying them the standard labor laws have set in India until they are embarrassed into it.

Exploitation is part of our industry, but at lease pay them!

[KKnardi]

I find this juxtaposition highly disturbing. my heart is with these poor people, not with fendi or anything of that nature. it's perturbing to help these people in this way. a vast percentage of them don't have clean water and we are talking about hermes bags?