Provoke by Juancho Ospina

ISSUE ONE / AW 2016

ProVoke

ANIMAL PRINTS IDEALISM S T RO K E S FAC E S GE N D E R L E SS D EC O N S T R UCT I O N S E S C A PA D E S B O DY W O R K S

SHREEYA MAVANI

Jake Liu

P R O V O K E

“I like her in this one, because she looks very natural,” Dangin said. “Yes,” Demarchelier agreed. “In that other pose, she looks like an actress.” “But she’s also very good here,” Dangin said, of a shot that showed her partially nude. “Yes, she’s very beautiful in that position. Do you want to cut it?” “No, no. I’m going to keep it for the ass,” Dangin said. “Maybe we could redo the ass.” “Yes, the ass is quite heavy.”

Patrick Dermarchellier discusses editing with Pascal Dangin: world class retoucher (Collins, 2008)

I have always seen myself as an image maker.

My work for the last year has been focused on creative imaging for fashion. It has involved the application of photography, collage, photo manipulation, illustration and editorial design as tools to produce fashion related content and to develop my own personal style. The uniqueness of my style relies on the combination of these techniques. In the current industry, the process of publishing fashion photographs is very interrupted, since most of the time it is a fashion art director that does the pre-production for

to call it an enhanced reality, where the clothing is sublime, the models are unrealistically perfect, the situations romanticised and the lifestyle exaggerated...and everything has plenty of postproduction. No wonder our perception of beauty and style is distorted. I have worked as a photographer before, as a retoucher, as an advertising art director for Tribal DDB and WPI. One of my issues with advertising and retouching is that many people treat this commercial images as a true depiction of

“I think photography has been wrestling with a burden of telling the truth, which I don’t think it was ever particularly good at.” - Nick Knight (Craveonline, 2016) a shoot, a photographer takes the pictures which are given to a retoucher that delivers finished pictures to magazine editors for them to develop layouts and send to print. It’s my desire to become proficient in this techniques becoming a versatile professional, involved with the images through every stage of the design process from photo to editorial or online publication. At the start of the course, I identified that there was an intrinsic artificiality in the fashion media. The fashion world depicted in advertising and editorials is obviously shot in the real life, but just like a movie, it’s make believe. The lifestyle portrayed in such media is surreal, not to say, unobtainable, for most people. I like

Provoke Issue 1 Autumn - Winter 2016 Edited by Sebastian Ospina

the world we live in, or take them for granted completely, forgetting that they are idealised and made with the sole purpose of making money. However, this concern is something I have to put aside in my commercial work, when I have an advertising or design job, which uses my artistic skills for business purposes, and to make money, ultimately. I am fascinated with editorial design and recently I have been very interested in preparing myself professionally for the role of a magazine editorial designer. I believe my skills in this different areas would be very valuable in any publication, and this is the position I will apply for after the MA.

C AVA N

McPHERSON L O N D O N - G L A S G OW - S A N F R A N C I S C O

TZU YIN

ANZE

P R O V O K E

They’re all dreams: every picture is a fantasy. Not so much the portraiture, but the set pieces definitely are fantasies and I think that the model or the sitter in a picture is the window for the viewer – for any person – to be a part of that fantasy. It’s me asking them, inviting them, to enter into that, whether it’s a dark and sinister mood or a beautiful fairytale. It’s escapism – that’s what it is. - Tim Walker

(Smith, 2016)

SOPHIE SMITH

GENTLE