Equal parts romance and business, the glamorous field of fashion photography is one of the most celebrated and competitive professions in the modern world. Like it or not, the fact remains that while an image doesn't count for everything, it certainly... [more]

Equal parts romance and business, the glamorous field of fashion photography is one of the most celebrated and competitive professions in the modern world. Like it or not, the fact remains that while an image doesn't count for everything, it certainly counts for a great deal. To up-and-coming designers, international celebrities, and powerful brand names, obtaining the right image is crucial. Is it any wonder then that the image makers are granted money, fame, and privilege? Fashion photography first came into existence at the turn of the century, when Vogue magazine hit the presses. Although Vogue experimented a bit with photography -- mainly of the celebrity portrait variety -- it would take 20 years for photographs to replace illustrations. As designers like Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli began to design clothes for a larger group of working women (rather than the privileged few who previously bought haute couture) photography was seen as a way to display the clothes to the general public. New magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and American Vogue began to hire photographers such as Man Ray and Edward Steichen to showcase the latest designs. The world of the fashion photographer as we know it first crystallized in the 1940s. Eileen Ford opened the first real modeling agency in New York. The media conglomerates and the major advertising agencies began to dictate how photographers should shoot -- what mood an image should portray. On the West Coast, the era of the great film stars had arrived. Studios wanted their stars to look dramatic, alluring, and perfectly beautiful; the camera could not give away too much or too little. It was at this time that the fashion photographers shifted away from artistry and experimentation, and turned more toward craftsmanship. While images were still supposed to be beautiful, they were shot with the intention to sell an image, and usually to sell a product. In the 1950s and '60s a few of today's celebrated photographers first emerged. Helmut Newton quickly rose to fame for his cold, sometimes androgynous, always disturbingly beautiful imagery. Richard Avedon favored outdoor settings and a more natural look at the start of his career. Today, fashion photography is a more complex and contradictory mixture of variables than ever. As computers become more and more prevalent in art and business, photographers and production artists retouch or enhance images to create an image that is truly outside of reality. Yet the general trend of advertising photography veers ever closer to reality. Spontaneity is a treasured quality in a photographer, a model, or a photo shoot; it blurs the line between fantasy and reality for consumers. Yet the fantasy is always there. A fashion photographer needs to capture the essence of what is beautiful and desirable at the moment. As public opinion and trends change, so must the photographer -- in fact, a great photographer can be responsible for instigating a trend. And while the overall goal of an advertiser is to sell products, the underlying motivation for a fashion photographer must be to create, over and over again, an exciting, suggestive, idyllic scenario that is almost of this world -- but not quite. [show less]