Photography and Fashion

Written by: Alice Braglia

How photography influenced fashion

The importance of fashion photography

Without question, photography plays a major role in global fashion culture and its industry and is currently commanding an increasing share of public consciousness of fashion.

Over the last few decades, fashion images have engaged with new technology and proved to be aesthetically provocative, economically useful, and ideologically powerful. But besides the massive amount of printed and online media on fashion photography circulating throughout our world, critical accounts of fashion photography are a lot harder to find.

It would be wrong to examine fashion photography only through the eyes of advertisement or prettiness. It would overlook its ability to be a possible form of self-expression, commentary on the world at large and/or reflection of time.

The impact of fashion photography on fashion

Fashion photography is the primary form of communication between fashion designers and the public.

The style of photography and the themes and underlying messages communicated along side the image of fashion function as a tool for communicating how society feels about culture, about what is beautiful or meaningful.

And because of that, there are risks.

Recently there has been a lot of pushback against photoshopping models into almost non-human forms, creating a culture full of anorexia and bulimia, especially in teen-targeted magazines.

Fashion is a highly visual art form. Quality fashion photography has been proven time and time again to help sales of fashion garments. Magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar are proof of this. In addition, fashion is often aspirational, and fashion photography of the editorial or advertisement variety allows one to imagine living a certain lifestyle that he/she may or may not be able to afford.

More recently, fashion bloggers have in many cases turned fashion photography and fashion itself into more of a commodity, where the photograph is devalued as an art medium, and the aspirational aspect is somewhat lost. The “blogger” photograph continues to feature the latest trends, and fashion merchandise is still sold, while at great cost to the value of photography as an artistic medium. At the same time, fashion blogger imagery has made fashion more relatable, bringing the latest trends “down to earth” so to speak.

History

The first traces we have of fashion photography date back to 1856, the year in which Adolphe Braun created a photo-book for Virginia Oldoni, a noblewoman of the court of Napoleon III, who was the first model in history to be portrayed in official clothing. The first fashion magazines created were Harper’s Bazaar (1867) and Vogue (1892), that originally used images and sketches of illustrators (like Christian Bérard and Georges Lepape), because couturiers didn’t trust photographers, fearing losing the exclusivity of their creations. The first fashion photographer was probably Baron Adolphe de Meyer, hired by Condé Nast in 1913 to shoot experimental pictures for Vogue: the images represented portraits of aristocrats, actresses and models wearing their usual clothing.

It was in the early XX century that fashion magazines and photos became increasingly important and international, so much that in Berlin, from 1905 to 1930, financial fields linked to tailoring used it always more and fashion became a distinctive genre in which personal styles were developed as were important collaborations with designers, agencies and editorial stories. In the Thirties Paris became the heart of high fashion and in that period of time German photographers moved there, like Horst P. Horst and Man Ray. With the coming of Hitler, fashion photography changed radically: editors had to replace their news editors, fashion houses and Jewish photographers abandoned the city due to repression; that’s the reason many of them, from Paris to Berlin, fled to Ney York. With the War, readers didn’t lose interest in magazines: fashion undergoes an evolution, becoming more practical and realistic. Erwin Blumenfeld was the first to use the Hasselblad camera, he created images with new perspectives and compositions. After the War, fashion undergoes an explosive boom and the new style of designers is portrayed by famous names such as Irving Penn (graphic and strong images with a white backdrop), Richard Avedon (all about one thing: movement. He replaced the static, lifeless poses of the Steichen era with photographs full of verve and vitality. He shunned the studio, preferring to work outdoors or on location. Capturing lively street scenes and bustling parties, his models were photographed in the moment, showcasing their natural femininity; the flowing clothes seemed somehow to be an elegant extension of their own bodies - pioneer of the semi-documentary style), Stern (he portrayed Marilyn Monroe just a few weeks before her death) and Clifford Coffin (he photographed designer Dior during his first fashion show, which determined his success). In the Sixties there were big changes: with the birth of the “hippie” period, media gave license to photographers to create images according to their instinct (let’s remember David Bailey and the images of Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy). The recession in the Seventies in the States and the involvement in the Vietnam War contributed to substitute imagination with realism. Blue denim became the world’s uniform. Social changes and feminism brought to success names such as Eve Arnold, Deborah Tuberville and Sarah Moon. Some of the strongest images of the decade came from Helmut Newton’s camera: the erotic poses of sexually confident women defy the ideal of femininity and sexual roles.

In the same years there was a rapid expansion of ready-to-wear lines, creating the category of catwalk photographers: previously only some articles of every Haute Couture collection were made available to photographers. Materialism and hedonism are what characterize the Eighties: fashion explodes in an industry of global consumerism, fed by TV commercials. Beauty standards continue to change: Top Models are born, emerging as icons of physical perfection and uniqueness becomes an alternative to classic beauty. In recent decades we have assisted to the birth of digital images: photographers such as David LaChapelle and Andrea Giacobbe use computers and visual art to modify and produce surreal images, which are continuing to evolve today.

Fashion on the internet: how images change fashion week

Photography has been influencing designers’ presentations long before the Internet, but now, it’s changing the whole industry.

The concept of a fashion show, with press and photographers, didn’t really exists until 1943, when Eleanor Lambert (future founder of the CFDA) organized a “press week” in an effort to drum up business. While this act eventually led to fashion cities around the world adopting a “Fashion Week,” the act of presenting clothes to drum up business planted the seed of another idea—that fashion shows were in part a promotional tool to reach consumers. Eleanor Lambert then founded the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1962, bringing designers out of the ateliers and into the spotlight and thereby putting American fashion on the map. One of the top publicists of her time, Lambert played a significant role in promoting American fashion as an integral part of contemporary lifestyles.

Of course, not everyone was on board with letting the press in. Couturiers were initially against photographers at their salon-style presentations for fear that their ideas would be stolen, but designers eventually warmed to the presence of cameras. From that point, the worlds of press and fashion seemed to get along, with designers not only embracing coverage of their shows, but actually staging them as spectacles, so as to appear better in images.

By the 1990s, designers like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano were elevating the fashion show to fashion performance. The elaborate sets and choreography created whole worlds in which their clothes could exist. And with the inclusion and rise of television (and therefore, video) coverage of the shows, it wasn’t just members of the industry that could be enchanted, but fans as well. For the briefest of moments, they could be invited into the glamorous world of high fashion.

While the industry seemed to be keeping pace with new technology and the press, things significantly changed in 1999 with the birth of the now defunct Style.com. While the Internet had of course been in existence for a while at that point, there weren’t really any websites dedicated to fashion—at least not in the capacity we’re used to today. Style.com was the first digitally native publication that became known as the online destination for runway images, and more importantly, for immediacy. It had every look, notable insider, news item, and beyond, all made available with the click of a mouse. Naturally, to keep competitive, other publications followed suit.

“[It has] become an arms race between the magazines and the blogs to have the pictures up faster and faster and faster,” veteran runway photography Don Ashby told FU’s Katharine K. Zarrella last year. Ashby, who founded Firstview.com, began shooting in the 1980s for publications like The New York Times and Harper’s Bazaar. But the immediacy of uploading and downloading, and the sheer volume photographers could snap, gave way to pictures and coverage exploding, oftentimes hitting the internet without a review.

Much like the couturiers of the 1940s and press, when camera phones started making their way into shows, some designers considered banning them, worried that their work was being released to the masses too quickly—after all, editing professional images from a show and posting them online still takes a few hours. Posting a snap to Instagram takes a few seconds. It’s impossible to police, but to this day, some designers politely request that attendees not take pictures of the show, for reasons ranging from protecting their looks, to not wanting to ruin the atmosphere, or simply to not ruin the professional runway shots (“put your phones down!” has become the new “uncross your legs!” for pit photographers attempting to herd the front row).

The overexposure of fashion is really taking away from its specialness

Some may argue that social media has allowed brands a way to get free promotion. To a certain extent, this was Lambert’s whole original idea—to get designers some attention. But her plan was meant to boost sales and incite desire. Though, considering “consumer fatigue,” the dispersion of runway images seems to be having the opposite effect. By the time the clothes actually hit the stores, they feel old. So much of fashion is about what is new, what is next. No one wants to look so last season, but that’s exactly what the immediacy of images is doing.

The reaction from brands, oddly enough, was not to quell the over-exposure, but to work around it. Major companies like Tommy Hilfiger and Burberry (among others) have moved to a see-now, buy-now show model, in which they present their clothes during the season for which they’re intended, rather than in advance. The entire way fashion week—and the industry—works is being upended by our ability to consume images online quickly, and it appears that no one has found a way to adapt to the new surroundings quickly enough. It’s a fascinating, if not frustrating, time to work in fashion, so while you’re scrolling through those pictures—on the gram or in our runway section—consider how they got there, and the way in which they’re shifting how our industry functions.