The Research on Aesthetic Characteristics of Storytelling Expressed in Modern Fashion Photographs - With a Focus on Steven Meisel’s Fashion Photos -

Abstract

The objective of this article is to examine the possibility of 'story-telling' as united concept of causality and subjectivity through sequence combination, and the 'similarity' between object and image in fashion photographs making diversity of meanings. To analyze and investigate the research, as evidential data this paper used the photos of Steven Meisel from 2002 till 2007 Vogue published in Korea, U.S, and Italy, as well as other visual data like graphic collections, catalogs, art-related data and internet data. This research runs both theoretical and positive investigations to suggest the function of story-telling in the Process of opened-communicative roles of fashion photos. Thus this paper investigated Steven Meisel's storytelling in his fashion photos; short moment of event, continuity of time, compound of sequence, and complexity of viewpoint. This paper also studied the aesthetic characteristics of Steven Meisel's fashion photos as categories of overlapped meaning, arbitrariness of interpretation, exclusivity of message, and decoding. The research result suggests that clothing not only includes current age's value but also among social constitutions it includes multilateral characteristics. Ultimately this paper is also making meaning alive by cutting off the chain of 'firm' meanings of fashion photo. That seems like opening the opportunity for correctly understanding fashion's meaning which has the aspects of ambivalence of changing meanings and values by the motivation of context and text.