[softgrey]

going to an opening party for this exhibit tonight...should be good...was this posted anywhere yet?

fashioning photography-@MOMA...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/ar...gn/11BELL.html

[faust]

I read about it. I was complaining to my wife that ever since MoMa moved to Queens, all of a sudden they stared with one cool exhibition after another. When MoMa was in midtown, it was all crap.

BTW, I think the link won't work for anyone who is not registered, so it'd be better to post the article.

[softgrey]

ok faust-here goes
i'm very curious to see what images they've chosen...i know that the creative dir of W mag had a lot of influence in the selection process...i don't know who else was involved...i have a feeling i'm going to disagree largely with the images they've chosen...hmmm...


article fr NY Times-new exhibit of fashion photography

In the 1990's fashion photography took a sharp turn away from the glamour goddesses of the past and toward a new image: pictures that challenged our notion of physical beauty, that made clothing subservient to sensibility and narrative, that, in some cases, did away with clothing or models entirely.

This Friday, the Museum of Modern Art begins "Fashioning Fiction," an exhibition devoted to these dramatic changes. Featuring images from advertising campaigns and magazine shoots, the show includes the work of art photographers like Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Cindy Sherman and Larry Sultan alongside that of such committed members of the fashion industry as Steven Meisel and Mario Sorrenti.

As a whole, they represent the relatively peaceful marriage that has lately been forged between artistic interest and commercial pursuit. In a preview of the exhibition and subsequent conversations, Holly Brubach, former fashion editor for The New York Times Magazine and author of "A Dedicated Follower of Fashion," and Rosalind Krauss, the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University and a founding editor of the art journal October, talked to Ginia Bellafante about what fashion photography was and what it has become.

GINIA BELLAFANTE Some people are going to come to this show, see a Kate Spade advertising campaign and wonder what it is doing in a museum. Does fashion photography belong here?

HOLLY BRUBACH I'd hate to get into a debate about whether fashion photography constitutes art. You do get the sense that these photographers are carrying on a dialogue with contemporary artists, and there's something exhilarating about seeing fashion photographers engaged in that dialogue. You don't get the sense that they're laboring in some inferior form. This is the means of expression that they've chosen.

ROSALIND KRAUSS There are a lot of photographers, well, there are four photographers — Avedon, Penn, Cecil Beaton, Man Ray — who belong in any 20th-century exhibit of photography. But fashion photography as it stands now, I have to say, I find a bit goofy.

BELLAFANTE This show is built around the idea that in the 1990's fashion photography became fixated with narrative, with storytelling. Is that how you see these pictures?

BRUBACH I don't know how narrative they are. Maybe if you stood in front of them long enough you'd figure out a story line — it was her birthday, they got together, they broke up, etc. They seem evocative of narrative circumstance more than anything else. People used to complain that Balanchine's ballets were too abstract, they lacked story lines, and he used to say, "Boy offers hand, girl takes hand, how much story do you want?" That's what I'm reminded of here. The narrative is vague, but that's not such a bad thing.

KRAUSS. What strikes me is that fashion photography has been the vehicle for a review of every kind of visual experience of the 20th century, whether photography or in painting. The show in some sense seems to be a survey of 20th-century art, leading up to abstraction with Simon Leigh, who has created very flat images that remove the body and leave a plane of color. Even in the field of fashion photography, where we assume there has to be a model and clothes, there's a movement away from that and I find that very interesting. I don't look at works of art or visual material in terms of narrative. I'm not into comic books.

BELLAFANTE It's a review of 20th-century art, but also of fashion's relationship to changing ideas about sexuality, family and the nature of our emotional connections.

BRUBACH I think what's happening in these pictures, to a large extent, is a case of fashion commenting on itself. Particularly, there's a send-up of female perfection, which seems logical given what happened in the 80's — the supermodel obsession and the idea of the sleek goddess that was projected in so many fashion images. We have to remember that there is this dialectic in fashion where it swings back and forth between perfection and ideal beauty and then toward a kind of revulsion with all that. And you see it in different forms here. You see it in Cindy Sherman, photographed with a face that's partially scarred, or you see it in the Nan Goldin or Mario Sorrenti pictures. They're consciously in your face with the idea that these are not supermodels. And then you see the whole idea played out again in more humorous form in the Meisel Italian Vogue shoot satirizing the 50's, which illustrates perfection but taken to such a degree that it becomes absurd and amusing.

[chippie27]

i would love to hear reviews from anyone who goes to this exhibit.... i really wish i could see it myself but i'll be out of the country until after it closes.

as for cool shows at moma qns--i especially loved matisse/picasso. the looong subway ride was totally worth it. :P

[softgrey]

providing it's not so crowded that i can actually see the photos...i'll give a full report tomorrow...chippie

[LilyBird]

Quote:

Originally posted by softgrey@Apr 14th, 2004 - 2:33 pm providing it's not so crowded that i can actually see the photos...i'll give a full report tomorrow...chippie

thanks!

[stylegurrl]

Thanks for the info! I am going to check it out.

[FunkyDiva]

I'm going with some very eager friends on Saturday, I'll give you guys the scoop!

[chippie27]

Quote:

Originally posted by softgrey@Apr 14th, 2004 - 2:33 pm providing it's not so crowded that i can actually see the photos...i'll give a full report tomorrow...chippie

yay!! looking forward to it!

[Eddie Wang]

I think this is another case of the art crowd trying to intellectualize about fashion. Like PL said (PL=Philip Lorca) without some factors in the museum there wouldn't be the show. Plus look who's in the show. Steven Miesel making art? Last time I checked he's the most commercial sell out ever. Even though you must admit that he's got some skills (thanks to his assistants of course and Pascal). Jergen Teller? Jesus christ! He does have some artistic stuff, but it's not his fashion stuff. It's his new work about his family and himself. And how is Larry Sultan's work in LA have anything to do with "fashion"? I think this show is another case of trying to sell tickets and get a big crowd. Fashion=big money now, you just can't deny it. So accept it and view the MOMA work as selling commercial work as "art". It should be interesting to see though...

[softgrey]

i'm trying to figure what i can share that would be interesting about the event last night...one thing i can attest to...it was very very cool...and completely un-pretentious?!?!!...even the photographers whose work is being exhibited didn't really seem very impressed...most of these people are not artists and don't claim to be...they are commercial photographers and are more concerned with shooting the latest gucci campaign than showing at a museum...no one can seem to figure out how the photograopher's were selected...the biggest question mark-ellen von unwerth...???

dennis friedman(W), ingrid sichsy-sp?(interview), and the curators are giving a lecture next week-Apr 21-6:630pm at SVA on 23rd st...maybe they will answer that question...i am planning on going as of now...i'll let you know...

what else would you guys like to know?...

[faust]

Quote:

Originally posted by softgrey@Apr 15th, 2004 - 1:01 pm i'm trying to figure what i can share that would be interesting about the event last night...one thing i can attest to...it was very very cool...and completely un-pretentious?!?!!...even the photographers whose work is being exhibited didn't really seem very impressed...most of these people are not artists and don't claim to be...they are commercial photographers and are more concerned with shooting the latest gucci campaign than showing at a museum...no one can seem to figure out how the photograopher's were selected...the biggest question mark-ellen von unwerth...??? dennis friedman(W), ingrid sichsy-sp?(interview), and the curators are giving a lecture next week-Apr 21-6:630pm at SVA on 23rd st...maybe they will answer that question...i am planning on going as of now...i'll let you know... what else would you guys like to know?...

I'd like to know if it's worth $12 and a car ride from Brooklyn

[softgrey]

Quote:

Originally posted by faust@Apr 15th, 2004 - 1:23 pm I'd like to know if it's worth $12 and a car ride from Brooklyn

welll...by someone else standards maybe...but probably not by yours, faust...

fyi...i think many people agreed that the two prada campaigns were the best works in there...
glen luchford and cedric boucher(sp?)...they were done when people still had budgets, of course...

[nqth]

About fahsion photography (old art. one)

Monaco's Grand Prix of Flesh and Fashion
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune

Tuesday, December 22, 1992

The blush-pink buildings of this toy-town city seem to have taken on a rosier glow. Is it the bright winter sunshine? The red carpet on the sidewalks and the Santa-with-sleigh fairy-lights? The thought of Princess Stéphanie giving birth to love-child Louis by her bodyguard? The sight of Crown Prince Albert on the Sporting Club dance floor with supermodel Claudia Schiffer?
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Or could it be the exhibition of fashion photographs in which clothes feature less - far less - than bared flesh?.
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The fourth International Festival of Fashion Photography generated a gala and a high-powered attendance from Helmut Newton through Karl Lagerfeld - and a debate.
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"Is fashion photography out of fashion?" was the question posed in a discussion that got to the heart of the subject matter hanging on the walls of the Sporting Club: Can fashion photographers give themselves that title if they dispense with clothes?
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"Yes," said French photographer Dominique Isserman, 45, known for tender images of women."Photographs of nudes are part of fashion, because if you take a picture of 1910 and compare it with a modern picture, as well as the differences of body or makeup, there is an attitude that reflects the time."
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"No," said Helmut Newton, whose fashion images have a powerful sexual charge. "It's dishonest if you don't photograph fashion." He walked out of the debate in which Vivienne Westwood (wearing silver earrings with the letters "SEX") dismissed fashion photography as "a very limited form of expression compared to painting."
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"Creativity comes from technique," she said. "It is based on lighting and composition. There is a constant battle between the classic approach and a romantic one. It needs the input of both. But a romantic attitude often leads to an overflow of self-indulgence.
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The exhibition is designed to showcase both the industry's leading figures and developing talent. Although it is open to the public (until Jan. 4), it is really a show for the pros, who look for work at fashion's cutting edge and for changes barely yet in focus.
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The show is about images of women, and they show slight, pale-faced figures in dark shrouds, transparent wraps, sex-shop accessories - or just nothing at all. At best, the pictures, which are a mirror of avant-garde fashion, have a tender poetry. Some are disturbing in that they suggest women as victims. All the photographs were in surreal contrast to the plump Monaco matrons in sturdy suits and the ritzy, fur-coated Italians out shopping for the holiday season.
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In exchanging the powerful woman of the 1980s for the fragile image of the 1990s, new wave photographers have dispensed with sensuous supermodels - even if Naomi Campbell (in a flutter of chiffon dress by Azzedine Alaïa) was co-presenter at the awards ceremony.
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The prize for young talent went to the 27 year-old British photographer Corinne Day, who first used the waif-like model Kate Moss - now high fashion's hot property. Day showed an arresting image of Moss with breasts barely veiled in a wispy blouse.
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Juergen Teller, a 28-year old German who was the 1991 new talent winner, showed New Age travelers - figures set in a patchy wasteland. His work for the designer Katherine Hamnett proved that it is possible, in spite of claims at the debate, to be avant-garde and yet show the clothes.
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"I don't believe that fashion photography is dead - it will always live," said German photographer Ellen Von Unwerth, 38, whose stylish, self-possessed women in exotic locations won the snapshot award.
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A feel for the ethnic is a current force in fashion photography, whether native culture is a backcloth for western clothes, or celebrated for itself. The beauty category was won by Mikael Jansson, 30, of Sweden. His tattooed decoration above bared breasts expresses a fascination with the tribal. A photograph of a ring on a wrinkled finger and a flowered necklet against a resigned face won the accessories category for the American Kurt Markus. Neither winner would be recognized by the general public as creating valid fashion images.
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HANNES Schmid of Switzerland made an impassioned plea for photographers to reflect social and political issues. He showed fashion with portraits of American Indian life.
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"But we are just contract photographers," said the Italian, Paolo Roversi, who won the Monaco grand prize. His images of a sinuous figure, head back, cigarette clamped between carmine-red lips, or a woman with rising bosom and spreading hat, are the development of Roversi's prophetic 1980s images of the new woman who was to break out of the chrysalis of her power suit. Gentle, reflective nudes form the centerpiece of the area devoted to Roversi's work.
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Many other nudes are hard-edged. Some are witty, like Sante d'Orazio's woman, naked but for high heels, on an alfresco dining table. Others are disturbing: Jean-François Lepage's collages of bodies mutilated by cutouts or staple marks.
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Helmut Newton sees nothing so new or so shocking about sexually charged imagery. "I've always gone after the glorification of women, but politically I'm a feminist," he said at the gala that he attended with his wife, June - known professionally as photographer Alice Springs.
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The fun of the evening was provided by Canon, which was showing off its newly launched Ion still video camera, which can project images immediately onto a screen. A rogue's gallery of portraits was flashed up and later laser-printed.
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Personalities are a powerful part of the fashion scene, as was shown by another exhibition at the Hôtel de Paris. The American photographer Roxanne Lowit celebrated the publication of her book, "Moments," with giant blow-ups of the 1980s fashion crowd.
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"They fix an era when everyone was living at night, they were sure it was magic and they thought they would last forever," she said of images that included Salvador Dalí (all twirling mustache and kiss curls), a Valkyrie-style Princess Gloria Thurn und Taxis, the artists David Hockney and Keith Haring, the designers Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, the late Halston, Antonio Lopez, Warhol and Nureyev partying until they dropped.
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Why was there so much angst at this celebration of fashion photography? The loss of confidence expressed at the debate is part of a general fin-de-siècle fashion malaise and a hangover from the exuberant 1980s. A new generation also feels that everything has already been done.
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Peter Lindbergh, whose graphic black and white images were a standout in the show, dismisses this theory.
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"It was always felt that everything had already been done - certainly when I started 15 years ago after [Richard] Avedon and [Irving] Penn," he said. "It's a long road . And it was always three out of 1,000 who made it."
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Ultimately, the exhibition proved what everyone knows: A good photograph has the power to impress an image on the imagination and to capture in that frozen moment the spirit of the age. If some of those images are harsh and disturbing - well, so is the world outside the confident prosperity and manicured luxury of Monte Carlo.