Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now

Tim Walker, "Magic World," Vogue Italia, January 2008.

The International Center of Photography just opened four exhibitions to inaugurate their “2009 Year of Fashion,” including the contemporary Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now. Surveying recent fashion photography, the show includes magazine spreads alongside actual photographic prints. As noted by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith in her review of the show, the majority of the magazines featured are either European or Japanese, with the lone American titles, W magazine and the New York Times. Smith’s candid admittance that she was unfamiliar with most of these foreign publications was striking: Considering the importance of some of the titles in fashion circles (i.e. Vogue Italia and Purple), it goes to show the strict divide between fashion and art in the States. Perhaps the fashion exhibitions at the IPC will contribute to narrowing this divide.

Weird Beauty’s inclusion of the actual magazine spreads makes for an interesting contextualization of the photographs and gives its due to stylists and make-up artists, yet one would have hoped for more of the actual prints to be included. After all, an avid reader of fashion magazines would have seen a good number of these photographs on the printed page, and the museum could provide a different perspective on the work through blown-up prints. In fact, the photographs whose prints were included alongside the spreads stole the show. Particularly interesting were works which originally had been published in Vogue Italia. A black and white photograph by Tim Walker looks diaphanous, as it explores the transparency of fabrics like organza and tulle. It also points to the notion of prostethically altered bodies via a round egg-shaped ruffle “dress” worn by one of the models and a fork-like device (reminiscent of a prosthesis) that partially holds up the other model in the frame.

Deborah Turbeville, "Charlotte Gainsbourg" Vogue Italia

Other photographs that stand out are a portrayal of Charlotte Gainsbourg by Deborah Turbeville—an established photographer with an enviably long career—also in Vogue Italia. The shot is reminiscent of a turn-of-the-century Chaplinesque heroine. Also of notice are Surrealist-inspired photographs by Sara Van Der Beek for W Magazine, as well as the lighly disturbing photograph by Richard Burbridge, a close-up on an eye doused in candy pink liquid, and aptly titled Pink Eye.

Richard Burbridge, Pink Eye, 2008.

Francesca Granata

Lynn Yaeger

Lynn Yaeger at Ann Klein show, 2007. Photo from Coutorture.

It is sad to report on the dwindling rank of fashion journalists. Now that Lynn Yaeger is no longer at the Village Voice, one is hard-pressed to think of anybody who could fill her eccentric shoes. Reminiscent of Anna Piaggi—the veteran Vogue Italia reporter—Yaeger pioneered an unmistakable look, which Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton of the Costume Institute recently described as "Porcelain-Doll-via-the-Weimar-Republic,” and which made her a staple of downtown New York.

Her irreverent and unique style reflects her equally irreverent and original fashion reporting, which eschews the usual devotion to all things luxury and celebrates the original and affordable—particularly in her now-defunct column “Elements of Style.” What is most refreshing about her style, as well as her writings, is that she is never shy in exposing the aspirational and unattainable nature of much fashion and fashion reporting, which she counters with an ironic and subversive take on luxury goods and status dressing.

Hopefully, an exhibition of her unmistakable style and take on fashion will soon be organized alongside the lines of the Anna Piaggi exhibition, Fashion-ology, curated by Judith Clark at the Victoria and Albert in 2006.

For Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton on Yaeger's style, see T Moment's blog.

Francesca

Chicago’s Small Press

Golden Age

Upon a recent visit to Chicago, I was surprised to find some really interesting new publications, in particular the art journal Proximity. Beautifully laid out and edited by Rachel and Ed Marszewski, it focuses on contemporary art and culture in Chicago and beyond in the aim of fostering “sustainable creative communities.” Among its engaging articles is a review of a new fashion magazine called Stitch Magazine and produced by students at Northwestern University. Stitch seems to provide an irreverent and novel approach to what constitutes a college fashion magazine.

Also, of notice is the year-old store and gallery Golden Age, which is entirely devoted to small press and art publications. This new addition, together with Quimby’s—a stalwart of indie publications—makes Chicago one of the most interesting cities to produce as well as consume small press.

Edward Steichen In High Fashion

Models Claire Coulter and Avis Newcomb wearing dresses by Lanvin and Chanel at 1200 Fifth Avenue, 1931.

Don’t miss the recently published book Edward Steichen In High Fashion: The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937, which discusses and re-publishes Steichen’s fashion photography and celebrity portraits. The images—all from the Condé Nast archives—were originally published in Vanity Fair and Vogue, and illustrate Steichen’s contribution to the burgeoning field of fashion photography and celebrity portraiture. That these two fields did not sit in high regard within the fine arts and photography realms with which Steichen had been previously associated, made his choice controversial and, to some extent, unusual. However, as Tobia Bezzola—one of the book’s authors—explains, his previous work as a painter and a fine art photographer clearly informed his “commercial” work—particularly in his rendition of clothing, as well as his choice of poses for his subjects.

The lavishly illustrated book, published by W.W. Norton, developed as a result of research that curators William A. Ewing and Todd Brandow completed in the Condé Nast Archives for the exhibition “Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography.” Steichen in High Fashion undoubtedly benefits from their extensive knowledge of the photographer’s work, which allowed them to fully contextualize this aspect of Steichen’s output within the rest of his career.

Spanning a period of 15 years, it is interesting to notice how the early prints from the 1920s--featuring theater actors alongside fashion models and silent film actors--are more painterly in their softer lights and greater gradation of grays in comparison to his later works, which feature a more stark contrast of black and whites and geometric shapes. (One of the book’s authors, Carol Squiers, describes this as Steichen’s “evolution from pictorialism to modernism.”)

Gary Cooper, 1930

Among the most iconic portraits included are those of actress Gloria Swanson and Pola Negri, and, later, Greta Garbo and Anna May Wong alongside those of dancers as Martha Graham, as well as Winston Churchill and Walt Disney.

An accompanying exhibition on Steichen’s photographic work is currently on view at the Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg through January 1st, 2009, and will be traveling to the International Center for Photography in New York on January 16, 2009. (For a full exhibition schedule, please visit the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.)

Francesca

Tartan & Hair

Alexander McQueen, "Highland Rape" collecion, AW 95-96

Among the number of fashion titles to be published this year, two caught my attention most, partially because they are both focused on a single “material” or textile. The first discusses the history of tartan and its symbolic significance up to the present day.

Particularly fascinating is the book’s discussion of the traditional, yet rebellious lineage of Tartan, which was exploited by contemporary designers such as Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood, as well as by artists like Matthew Barney. Written by Jonathan Faiers, it is the first in a series by Berg titled “Textiles that Changed the World” dedicated to one single textile. The next book in the series will be on felt.

Also of interest, is a collection on hair—Hair Styling, Culture and Fashion (to be published by Berg and edited by Geraldine Biddle-Perry, Sarah Cheang )—which discusses the cultural and symbolic import of hair both on and off the body, with articles ranging from “Fashionable Hair In The Eighteenth Century: Theatricality and Display” (by Louisa Cross) to “Hairpieces: Hair, Identity and Memory in the Work of Mona Hatoum” (by Leila McKellar).

Mona Hatoum, Hair Necklace, 1995