Fashion Photography Research Articles

Masculine exposure: Transgressive representations of the male nude in contemporary dance and editorial fashion photography

Abstract The male body as subject/object has taken various forms across artistic disciplines, cultures and points throughout history. Previously, the image of a virile, muscled Adonis prevailed as an idealized hegemonic masculinity. A look at contemporary visual and performing arts of the twenty-first century reveals a progressive shift towards a more inclusive range of multiple masculinities and representations of maleness, queering conventional depictions of the male form. This creative interrogation of normative gender expression on the stage and screen and in print has the potential to challenge binary constraints on gender and expand the visibility of queer, marginalized expressions of masculinity. This article employs queer gaze theory and close readings of performance as text to examine works by fashion photographer Steven Klein and choreographer John Jasperse to evaluate how the personal history, creative methodology and artistic outlook of each contemporary artist play a role in questioning traditional masculine representations via the transgressive nude male body.

Stereo Imaging In Fashion Photography

Fashion photographs are generally two-dimensional images showing one side of a three-dimensional model. This paper, however, deals with far less well-known stereoscopic fashion photographs. Stereoscopy is a technique that creates the illusion of a 3-D image. Based on the image collection of Swiss textile and clothes company HANRO, the article analyzes the composition of 3-D pictures by putting them in a broader media-historical context. The archived stereoscopic photographs date back to the 1950s and show a series of women’s fashion. In the same period, Hollywood experienced a 3-D-boom that may have had a technical and aesthetical impact on these photographs. Although fashion is not mediated in moving images in this case study, codes or formal languages of a film are inscribed in the images, as will be shown in the following text. Building on these findings, this paper further discusses the influence of cinematography and other media practices on the fashion industry’s attempt to free its fashion imagery from the confines of a two-dimensional page.

Thinking fashion photographs through queer affect theory

Abstract In this article, I suggest that the commonly used approaches to the study of fashion photographs could be fruitfully enriched by juxtaposing them with affect theory. I conduct a theoretical investigation of the benefits that affect theory, and in particular the strand articulated by queer theorists, may bring to the reflections on fashion photographs. I do so in a twofold way: by intertwining traditional visual analysis with an affective reading grounded in corporeal experience; and by illustrating how the queer affects circulating in fashion photographs might foreground issues of gender and sexuality and unfold possibilities of queer attachment. Two very different case studies, a photo spread by Corinne Day for The Face and the Gucci Pre-Fall 2016 advertising campaign, are chosen to explore how a specific affective register, i.e. ‘flat affect’, embedded in the images, might open up possibilities for envisioning queer aesthetic futures.

패션 사진에 나타난 마네킹 이미지에 관한 연구 -2000년 이후를 중심으로-

패션 사진에 나타난 마네킹 이미지에 관한 연구 -2000년 이후를 중심으로-

(Im)possible to Try: Notes on Soviet Fashion Photography

Nowadays the images from our recent Soviet past become more distant—not only in terms of time, but the context becomes less and less obvious as a consequence of time passing. The ability to understand the meanings of images and distinguish between Soviet and non-Soviet is determined not only by the content of a photograph, but also by the viewer’s experience. The fashion photographs from the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is a good example on that score. Specific soviet cultural experiences appearing through borrowed Western patterns can be recognized through the small details like a pose, a gaze and a backdrop, as well as through the materiality of the print itself. The attempt to fix one’s gaze and make one’s way through the many layers of the image, conditioned both by its content and its material characteristics, gives another opportunity to interact with the recent past.

Rewriting Lolita in fashion photography: Candy, consumption, and dying flowers

Since the release of Kubrick's film in 1962 visual representations of Lolita have proliferated. Yet, such visualisations tend to re-signify ‘Lolita’, departing significantly from the way she is constructed in Nabokov's novel. This article considers why the figure of ‘Lolita’ fits so seamlessly into the logic of the fashion media in the West. It points to the fashion industry's fixation with the ‘woman-child’ and infantilisation, as well as the centrality of clothing and consumption in Nabokov's novel. Particular attention is paid to Marc Jacobs’ advertisement for Oh, Lola!, banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Agency in 2011. Methodologically, the article presents visual analysis alongside findings from audience studies conducted with female participants.

Use of Color Information in the Analysis of Fashion Photographs

The 21st century witnesses a blooming of online fashion retailing business, as well as the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) marketplaces. However, many listings on the P2P marketplace lack complete and accurate information. In this research, we target the fashion online marketplace, and try to retrieve garment color information to help sellers and buyers gain a more comprehensive knowledge of the fashion items. We focus on fashion product portraits, and propose a system that autonomously finds the garment region in the image and retrieves the color information and patterns of the item. This system contains three modules: First, image segmentation is deployed to partition the image into perceptually meaningful areas, and then some features are designed to differentiate the garment, region from nongarment region. Secondly, we propose a classifier module based on unsupervised clustering methods to select the garment region based on the feature vector. For the last module, we study current color naming systems, and color naming schemes on fashion websites, and propose a computational model that matches the color coordinates with the pre-defined color labels in the marketplace. Compared with other methods, thanks to the unsupervised learning methods that we use, our approach does not require a huge amount of training data labeled by human subjects.

Fashion/Photo/Film: The Intertextual Discourse of Funny Face (1956)

In this paper I mobilize Funny Face (dir. Stanley Donen, 1956) to examine the intertextual nexus between fashion, fashion photography, and film. Set in New York City and Paris, with costume design by Hubert de Givenchy and Edith Head, the film is a latter day telling of the Pygmalion myth, such that photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) and Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson), the dictatorial Fashion Editor of Quality, take up the challenge of converting Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn), whom they regard as an unprepossessing bookstore intellectual, into a top model. Thus I analyze how a film that is more generally regarded as a benchmark in the Hollywood musical for its exuberant use of colour and songs is, more particularly, a cinematic locus for both the mediation and mediatization of fashionable identities. To this end, I assess how the film elaborates the power of the fashion industry as a matter of social practice in regards to Foucauldian discourse and the related concept of the énoncé, or event/statement. Thus I evince I two events/statements — “Think Pink!” and “Bonjour Paris” — to discuss in particular the relationship of style to national identities and the need or desire for America to assert cultural leadership in fashion photography, art, and design over France in the context of 1950s Cold War politics. By comparison, I enlist the statements, “Take the Picture!” and “A Bird of Paradise,” to examine respectively the dynamic of looking/gazing between the fashion photographer and designer and their (in this case) female models, the nexus between star designing, clothing, and gender identity, and what Foucault calls assujetissement — subjection — which connotes the dual process of Jo’s subordination as well as the act of her becoming or “being made” a subject according to a system of power.

Fashion photography and surreal photography. A never ending relationship

Este articulo propone un estudio de la fotografia de moda como cruce entre el elemento comercial y el arte, y donde la influencia de la corriente surrealista se presenta continua. El analisis de algunos fotografos de moda que se inspiran en el surrealismo, y una interpretacion de este a nivel fotografico nos lleva -siguiendo una estructura deductiva- a demostrar la idea del encuentro entre lo mercantil y el arte surrealista. Ejemplos tempranos de fotografos de moda que apuestan por el surrealismo los encontramos en el polifacetico Man Ray, introductor de la experimentacion en la fotografia de moda, en los anos 40 en Erwin Blumenfeld, y ya en los anos 70 destaco el frances Guy Bourdin

Behind the Scenes with Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Toni Frissell: Alternative Views of Fashion Photography in Mid-Century America

This essay explores the process and labour involved in creating fashion editorials. It is focused on the work of Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Toni Frissell, as case studies of photographers who worked at America’s two leading fashion magazines: Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Images that show these women “backstage” form the basis of this analysis, to expose the images’ compositions and the teams of people involved in their creation. Both photographers worked at a key moment in American fashion, as designers such as Claire McCardell created a simple, interchangeable wardrobe of readymade clothes that catered to the increasingly active lives of middle-class women. They were significant to the “Modern Sportswear Aesthetic” that emerged during this period and which exploited Kodachrome’s rich tones to compose alluring images that showed sportswear as adaptable and fashionable. Frequently shot outside, or using carefully contrived sets, their imagery provides a case study for the ways fashion’s creative workers collaborated to construct convincing visions of sportswear’s emergent style. Drawing upon Bruno Latour’s theories of organization, this article examines these networks of people, working to varied briefs and deadlines to create each magazine issue. From contact sheets and shots of fashion editors and models, to glimpses of the photographers’ efforts to find the right angle, this essay uses Dahl-Wolfe and Frissell’s photobooks and archival materials, including memos between Bazaar Editor-in-Chief Carmel Snow and Frissell, to challenge the idea of the seamless fashion page and look at the professional work and negotiations necessary to create a successful image.

A Study on the Application of Traditional Elements in Chinese Fashion Photography -Focused on Chenman's Photographs

A Study on the Application of Traditional Elements in Chinese Fashion Photography -Focused on Chenman's Photographs

Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie by Shelton Waldrep

Reviewed by: Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie by Shelton Waldrep Lisa Perrott (bio) Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie by Shelton Waldrep. Bloomsbury. 2015. $100.00 hardcover; $24.56 paperback; $25.99 e-book. 240 pages. On my way to Melbourne to give a presentation at the symposium The Stardom and Celebrity of David Bowie, the airport customs official smirked and shook her head in disbelief—“Really? Your university is sending you to a David Bowie conference? Well, I’ve heard it all now!”1 Interpreted as frivolous fandom, many New [End Page 183] Zealanders were dubious about the prospect that a figure like Bowie might generate serious scholarly attention. Despite such antipodean bemusement, the year of 2015 was strangely fascinating for the emerging field of Bowie studies. It was a year marked by a hive of activity devoted to studying, celebrating, and performing David Bowie. This was the year when news presenters donned tailored ice-blue suits reminiscent of the Freddie Burretti–designed outfit depicted in the music video for Life on Mars, when fashion photographers focused their lenses on androgynous models adopting Bowieesque poses, glammed up in Ziggy Stardust garb or Thin White Duke suits. There were musical tributes, academic conferences, and exhibitions devoted to Bowie. In 2015 the critically acclaimed David Bowie Is exhibition made its presence felt in Chicago, Paris, Melbourne, and Groningen, achieving record-breaking attendance.2 I gorged on the feast of the Melbourne David Bowie Is exhibition and the conjoined Bowie conference. Staged at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, these events energized the heart of Melbourne, drawing in stylish fans, pundits, and the performative presence of serious Bowie doppelgängers.3 The intensity of examination, dissection, and celebration—verging on worship of Bowie—felt preemptive, like the sort of laudatory activity triggered by the death of a great thinker or artist. There seemed to be a prescience to the collective unconscious in this year leading up to Bowie’s death. Academics, fans, and “aca-fans” indulged in critical and creative events and publications, which examined Bowie as a serious cultural phenomenon. Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie took its place within the pantheon of these critical Bowie books of 2015, which included Enchanting David Bowie: Space/Time/Body/Memory, David Bowie: Critical Perspectives, and Experiencing David Bowie.4 Authored and edited by an articulate collection of scholars representing diverse disciplines, identities, and locales, these books have helped establish Bowie studies as a serious scholarly field. To this pantheon Future Nostalgia contributes an expansive interdisciplinary examination of the cultural and aesthetic influence of Bowie as he engaged in various performative practices. Examining several different approaches to the study of performance, Waldrep aims to stay close to his original thesis—“that Bowie gives us a way to understand the vicissitudes of performance, aestheticizing the link between rock music and everyday life by calling attention to the artificiality of both.”5 Such a thesis can be likened to woven silk—when cut it opens up a frayed edge, with numerous threads unraveling in multiple directions. Although remaining proximal to his thesis, Waldrep invites his readers to pick up and follow many tangential threads. [End Page 184] Future Nostalgia’s most significant contribution is Waldrep’s probing examination of Bowie as a performer—one whose performativity across music, stage, visual media, and everyday life incites further performativity. Rather than relying on a conventional or singular understanding of performance, Waldrep critically surveys a number of differing approaches, all of which are important for understanding the sheer complexity of Bowie as a performer, his impact on mass culture and subcultures, and his role in liberating identity. The first chapter provides an extensive discussion of performance art, which includes stage and theatrical performance, Brechtian minimalism, mime, Asian theater gesture, the performativity of the bunraku puppet theater, performative body art, and the performance of self in relation to personae. In other sections, Waldrep discusses musical and vocal performance as well as the notion of performativity as a banal aspect of everyday social interactions. Chapter 1 includes a useful examination of Bowie’s engagement with the pastiche of gender. While noting that Judith Butler’s theories of gender and sexuality are helpful...

Installation Artist in the Fashion Industry: Yayoi Kusama

The history of fashion has shown that art and fashion are influenced by each other. Cooperation between the two disciplines is quite extensive. In this work, first, the installation artist Yayoi Kusama’s installations and the clothes that she prepared for these installations are examined. Then, the 2012 collection prepared with the cooperation of Yayoi Kusama-Louis Vuitton was examined and visual content analysis forms were created. As a result of the findings, a capsule collection was prepared in honour of Yayoi Kusama and photographed by establishing the figure–ground relationship as in the fashion photographs of the Yayoi Kusama-Louis Vuitton collection. Keywords: Yayoi Kusama, Louis Vuitton, fashion design, art, capsule collection.

NUOBODULYS IR PRIEVARTA: ANTONIONI „FOTOPADIDINIMO“ ATVEJIS

Tęsiant kinematografinės prievartos tyrinėjimus, straipsnyje nagrinėjamas vienas ryškiausių kino istorijoje metakino pavyzdžių – Michelangelo Antonioni „Fotopadidinimas“ („Blow up“). Pirma, atskleidžiant, kokiu būdu „Fotopadidinimas“ aprėpia ne vien fotografijos istorijos, bet ir pamatinius ontologijos klausimus, sugrįžtama ne vien prie vieno iš fotografijos pradininkų F. Talboto, bet ir prie filosofijos klasiko Platono nuostatų. Antra, pasitelkiant R. Barthes’o nuostatas, tyrinėjami mados fotografijos filosofiniai aspektai. Trečia, siekiant išryškinti bendrą „Fotopadidinimo“ kontekstą, aptariama J. Bergerio ir D. McCullino kontroversija karo arba agonijos fotografijos klausimu. Straipsnyje atskleidžiama Antonioni strategija fiksuoti prievartą (žmogžudystę) ne tiesiogiai, bet kaip sociume vyraujančios monotonijos įveikos simptomą ar galimybę. Argumentuojama, kad tokia prieiga leidžia Antonioni išvengti prievartos statuso hipostazavimo, būdingo profetiniams meninės prievartos manifestams.

Orientalist Fashion, Photography, and Fantasies: Baron Max von Oppenheim's Arabian Nights in Context

This article discusses Max von Oppenheim's Orientalism as exemplified in his collection of photographs and costumes, in the midst of a growing Orientalist visual culture in turn‐of‐the‐century Europe. Oppenheim is presented as a disseminator of new tastes and desires, anticipating the Orientalist costume parties, fashion shows, and theater productions in 1910s Europe. The development of photography as a medium, increased interest in ethnography among scientists, and rapid advances in fashion photography in particular helped to spread the reach of the Orientalism that Oppenheim pioneered. Tracing the Orientalist visual culture of his time, this paper uncovers how Oppenheim engaged with and perpetuated existing Orientalist fantasies but also diverged from common disseminations thereof. The specific biographical and cultural context of Oppenheim's travels and experiences, specifically in Cairo (1896–1909), creates his specific Orientalism—much more involved, reciprocal/collaborative, and tactile—the character of which will crystallize in the course of the discussion to follow.

패션 사진에 나타난 여성 동성애 이미지의 표현 유형과 내적 의미

본 연구는 패션 사진에 나타난 여성 동성애 이미지의 표현 유형을 고찰하고 이에 내재된 의미를 파악하는데 목적을 두었다. 연구 방법은 패션 사진과 여성 동성애에 대한 문헌 연구와 2000년부터 2016년까지 패션 광고와 패션 매거진 화보 사진에 나타난 여성 동성애 이미지의 사례 연구를 진행하였다.BR 연구 결과 여성 동성애 이미지 표현 유형은 첫째, 키스나 진한 스킨십, 성행위를 연상시키는 포즈, 노출에 의한 직설적 표현, 둘째, 친밀한 친구 사이를 연상시키는 자연스러운 분위기의 암시적 표현, 셋째, 남성과 여성의 기호복식 착용에 의한 복장도착의 표현, 넷째, 수동적 위치의 여성상을 탈피하여 관음의 적극적인 주체이자 대상으로 제시된 관음증적 표현, 다섯째, 여성 동성애 사이의 가피학적인 이미지 연출로 자극적 이미지를 제시한 사도 마조히즘적 표현으로 나타났다.BR 이상의 고찰 결과 여성 동성애 이미지의 내적 의미는 첫째, 다채로운 이미지로 표현된 여성 동성애 이미지는 다면화된 여성의 성적 욕망을 가시화한 것으로 주체적 이미지의 새로운 여성상을 제시하였다. 둘째, 직설적이거나 선정성을 배제하고 여성 동성애 코드만을 간접적으로 활용함으로써 레즈비언 시크라는 감성적 이미지의 패션 미학으로 승화되었다. 셋째, 여성 동성애라는 자극적이고 차별화된 코드를 활용한 패션마케팅 전략의 일환인 동시에 다양한 감성을 불러일으키는 이미지 표현으로 대중의 공감과 보편성을 확보함으로써 패션 소비 욕망을 극대화 시키는 수단으로 작용되었다.BR 이를 통해 패션 사진에 나타난 여성 동성애 이미지는 시대의 사회 문화적 정신을 공유하고, 여성은 물론 여성 동성애 이미지에 대한 새로운 변화를 추구하고 있음을 파악할 수 있었다. 앞으로 동성애를 비롯한 성정체성에 대한 열린 시각으로 다각도의 연구가 지속되기를 기대한다.BR

현대 패션사진에 나타난 로우테크 표현과 미적가치

오래되고 단순하며 낮은 수준의 기술로 대변되는 로우테크는 과거의 유산이자 미래의 기술을 구성하는근간이다. 현재 나타나는 로우테크 경향은 빠른 속도로 변화하는 하이테크놀로지 시대 속에서 기술변화에끊임없이 적응해야 하는 피로와, 편의를 위한 기술 속에서 역설적으로 분업화되고 탈기능화되어 결국 소외되어 가는 인간과 삶의 본질에 대한 재고의 결과이다. 본 연구는 로우테크 경향이 나타나는 사회문화적 현상을파악하고, 현 시대에서의 로우테크 개념을 정의한다. 나아가 예술과 패션도 로우테크 영향을 받는다는 가정하에 패션사진에서 로우테크가 어떠한 방식으로 표현되고 있으며, 어떠한 내적의미를 지니는지를 유추하였다. 사회문화적 맥락에서 로우테크는 기술과잉과 기술발전에 따른 반작용, 정보개방과 공유 및 협력을 강조하는 메이커 운동에 따른 기술 민주주의의 확대, 적정기술과 물질소비문화의 본질에 대한 재고로서 인간적삶에 대한 주체적 태도를 확립해 가는 과정에서 나타난 현상이다. 예술적 맥락에서는 미니멀리즘과 디지털의정제된 세련미에 반대하고 그에 대한 피로를 표출하는 것이며, 로우테크를 아방가르드로 인식하거나 또는과거의 기술에 대한 향수로서, 친숙하고 쉬운 기술적 접근을 통해 새로움과 즐거움을 제공하는 것으로 볼수 있다. 이에 예술작품에서 로우테크는 기계적 매커니즘, 아날로그 매체 및 하이터치 기법, 비전문가적 초기디지털 기술을 통해 각각 단순성, 반복성, 복고성, 우연성, 키치성의 의미를 복합적으로 내포한다. 사회문화적현상과 예술작품에 나타나는 로우테크적 경향과 내적의미는 패션사진에도 영향을 미친다. 패션사진에 나타난 로우테크 표현의 특징 또한 사진 작업시 최첨단의 그래픽 기술이나 정제된 편집 기술을 과시하지 않으며, 비전문가처럼 보이도록 한물간 기법과 이미지들을 사용하여 의도적으로 하이테크의 느낌을 피하는 것으로나타난다. 기법적으로 지나치게 반기술적인 단순한 후처리와 편집, 수작업적 짜깁기 및 이어 맞추기를 통해창작된 패션사진은 반문화적 패션테마와 인본적 패션테마를 표현하는 것으로 나타난다.

Leader of the Gang: Gosha Rubchinskiy and the Death of the Catwalk

Of all the fashion designers to have emerged in Russia in recent years, few are more remarkable than Gosha Rubchinskiy. He first made his name as a fashion photographer and designer of street wear, before being signed up by Adrian Joffe at Comme des Garçons in 2012. One of the most interesting aspects of Rubchinskiy’s work is his video output. Rubchinskiy’s unique brand of moving image completely “transfigures” the fashion film, raising important questions about the role and status of the fashion designer, the limits of the fashion film, the workings of the fashion system, the role of the catwalk, and indeed the nature of fashion itself. These questions are the focus of this article, which discusses three of Rubchinskiy’s films in particular, namely Transfiguration, The Casting of Alexey and The Day of My Death.

The Dilemmas of Aging and Down-aging : The Fashion Attitude of Senior Street Look

This study aimed to analyze the dilemmas of aging and down-aging by the senior street look, and to examine the styling, psychology, and attitudes of the elderly through socio-cultural discussions. It was conducted through a multidisciplinary literature review and empirical analysis of seniors featured in fashion photos collected from SNS. With respect to seniors’ fashion attitudes, firstly, they make personal/social records of dress as a means of recording aging and to reminiscence. Secondly, they attempt to down-age kidult play using mature humor. Thirdly, they try to express a perfect, moderate, and mature beauty to positively adapt themselves to aging. Fourthly, they adopt a regional and ethnic look to escape from the dilemmas accompanying aging and down-aging. This may be regarded as an attitude for repositioning themselves and planning a new life by escaping from a long-standing frame. Finally, they show a desire to stop and enjoy the moment of aging. While recording their cherished everyday lives, they enjoy the present rather than becoming concerned about the past or the future and use styling as a cure for their lives.

Homo Post-Sovieticus: (Re)fashioning the Male Body in Putin’s Russia

Abstract The subject of this article is the male body in contemporary Russian fashion photography. My aim is to locate such photography within current debates around subject construction, representation, and masculinity. In particular, I argue that a number of images of the male body that can be found on the websites of three Russian fashion designers—Serguei Teplov, Cyrille Gassiline, and Gosha Rubchinskiy—can be read as homoerotic. This emergent homoeroticism is all the more interesting because it comes at a time when Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has made heroic, heteronormative masculinity a central pillar both of his own personal popularity and of Russian national identity. As well as being noteworthy in itself, this raises important questions about the ideological nature of men’s fashion photography, not only in twenty-first-century Russia but also in a more general sense.