Fashion photography; a genre of photography which has become an industry of its own due to its devotion to a different side including the likes of clothing, accessories, shoes, lifestyle etc. It is fun, fantastical, sensuous, glamour fuelled and more and is above all very different compared to that of photography. Prominent fashion photographers with the likes of Edward Steichen, where his portraits for Vanity Fair brought him new fame; Baron Adolf de Meyer, American Vogue’s first official fashion photographer; Richard Avedon, the most influential fashion photographer of the post-war era; Erwin Blumenfeld, an imaginative visionary who claimed to have “smuggled art” into his body of work and later on, David Bailey, considered one of the pioneers of contemporary photography. Just to name a few. Themselves and others have contributed to the world of fashion photography, being responsible in taking the viewer into a dreamy state, something more surreal, unimaginable, and setting the pattern pieces for today’s fashion photographers and image makers. Tim Walker; Miles Aldridge; Juergen Teller and Elizaveta Porodina are a handful of fashion photographers I have looked into that have created iconic and memorable fashion images as well as paving the way for the future fashion visionaries.
16
To compare and contrast two photographers who have played leading roles in fashion photography and image making would be an interesting way of visualising them. With Irving Penn who has passed away and Juergen Teller who is still very much working, what qualities overlap and what qualities differ from one another? Fashion photography was the first method of producing fashion related imagery in capturing the ideas of both designer and photographer.
