Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography

Interesting exhibition at the V&A giving an overview of the last hundred years of fashion photograph.

The title comes from a quote by Vogue photographer Irving Penn that photographers are “Selling dreams not clothes” and that quite sets up a tension throughout the show between photographers and those who are commissioning them. At least two Vogue editors are reported as asking photographer to concentrate on the clothes more. I love the quote from editor Carmel Snow “You are not here to make art, you are here to show the buttons and bows”!

I think I am with the editors! I think the art of fashion photography is showing off the clothes and I dislike pictures where you can barely see what a model is wearing. They are still good photographs just not fashion photographs.

This show was a bit of a quick romp through the genre from Edward Steichen’s 1911 pictures of dressed by Poiret seen as the first fashion photographs though to the images from the 1980s more interested in reality than air brushing.

I loved a 1950s shot by Frank Horvat of a woman in a suit with the shadow of a head of a man across it and a studio show by Tim Walker of a model with a giant camera and standing on huge contact prints.

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