Benn98
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Jimmy Moffat, founder of Red Hook Labs, the photography studio and exhibition space in Brooklyn and cofounder of Art & Commerce
“I think there is an actually really interesting, wonderful, powerful, new group of photographers emerging from backgrounds that we’ve never seen before. It’s a really fascinating time.” Asked who these groups are, he replied, “Women, people of color. The fashion industry has been dominated in its entire industry by white, male photographers. We’ve seen in the past couple of years a wonderful influx of really talented women photographers, and now you’re starting to see a group of young African-American, second-generation African and photographers of color really entering the market and producing incredibly exciting work.”
One person he would definitely highlight is the 23-year-old British woman Nadine Ijewere, second-generation African, her family is from Nigeria, and she’s an artist in residence at Red Hook Labs. She has contributed to Nataal, the online digital media platform that’s being published for the first time in June, run by Sara Hemming and Helen Jennings. “It’s a wonderful source for emerging photographers from Africa and the Diaspora,” he said.
Ijewere is being repped by Camilla Lowther Management in London and has photographed for Italian Vogue, Stella McCartney and Adidas.
He also pointed to Campbell Addy, “a young, black London photographer. There’s a young African-American artist whose name is Tyler Mitchell, who’s super talented and super young. These guys are all friends,” he said. He also cited Ronan McKenzie and Ruth Ossai. “I’ve discovered them and I’m going to show their work in May. I think there’s a really interesting young group. I think what’s also interesting is these kids, because they’re all in their early 20s, have bypassed the traditional pathway. Now, with social media, and particularly Instagram, kids are being discovered all the time. I discover photographers all the time on Instagram. They get hired directly by clients who have no patience anymore necessarily for going through creative agencies.
“What’s really important to me is to teach kids from Red Hook in the South Bronx. Some of the kids I’m teaching are really good and are really talented. And they had the same opportunity to even consider this industry. My friend, Jaime Perlman, who used to be a creative director of British Vogue, is coming out this summer with a magazine called Less Is More about fashion under $100. My students are shooting fashion stories for her, and they’re amazing.” He is involved with an organization in Los Angeles called Las Fotos, with teenage Latino photographers. “A young woman named Jasbeth Perez photographed a fashion story in a skate park for Less Is More, and it’s one of the best fashion stories I’ve seen,” said Moffat.
As for which photographers are doing the big fashion magazine covers, he said, “I’ve had the privilege of working with Steven Meisel for 30 years, and he’s widely known for taking care of models, respecting models and helping models succeed. He’s doing much of the major fashion work today. There will never be another Steven Meisel. He’s the greatest fashion photographer in history, and he’s still going strong. Inez and Vinoodh are wonderful and they’re doing a lot.”
Stephen Frailey, chair, BFA of video and photography department of the School of Visual Arts
“The first thing that comes to mind, other than the students who are graduating from our graduate fashion program, is the generation of photographers who are still influencing and who are still thought of as relatively new — Jamie Hawkesworth, Julia Hetta and Harley Weir. One could say their work is already acknowledged. But I feel that they still represent a real shift in fashion photography toward something that has a lot more naturalism and lack of affect, and that also embraces other genres of photography such as landscaper and documentary.
“Female photographers, more so in fashion and commercial photography, are completely underrepresented. What’s considered fine art photography, although I am uncomfortable with that term, has become much more democratic. It’s possible that naturalism is a renunciation of a certain kind of macho, aggressive photography. What we consider to be a female sensibility has influenced both genders.
“The biggest things that I see in fashion photography is blurring the binary genders, which I think is also responsible for what I’m calling the kind of naturalism, and lack of affectation. A simple way of saying it is that it feels to me in a lot of my students’ work, and the names that I’ve mentioned, it’s a matter of photographing your friends, the people you hang around with and doing something that feels authentic and not highly stylized and artificial. There have been a lot of different points in the last 30 or 40 years in fashion where that has occurred. It seems to go back and forth between a sense of artifice and a sense of realism.”
Li Edelkoort, founder of Trend Union and dean of Hybrid Design Studies at the New School’s Parsons School of Design
“It’s all new names in a way so nobody has really been established in this new field. What I know is there are many, many female photographers and they do have a very different vision on color and composition and what is beautiful and not. The new wave of photographers will be much more inclusive. The eye has gotten so used to the thread-thin models that it will take some time, but already the eye is getting used to hugely different bodies, faces so the time for ethereal beauty has sort of been left behind. It’s more real. I think it’s very, very good. Certainly, there are many people falling off and they will have to be replaced. There is also a host of new editors-in-chief that will help to take the conversion to another period. In a way, it’s long overdue. Power, money, greed are always the same reasons why things don’t move. The late Corinne Day is almost like a role model for this new generation of girl photographers. Her type of photography and vision is what is now coming into bloom — the no-sock revolution.”
Source: WWD.com
