Report from the Met

We went to the Met on the holiday Monday, and saw three photography shows:

The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard

The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion

All three seemed to me on the shallow side. It's my opinion that none of these shows know when to stop, really.

Model as Muse would have been fine with just the photos and the clothes. More than fine.

Instead, its credibility is destroyed by an overlay of crap culture. An ill-considered and immature "era" approach is taken in which fake graffiti, bad pop songs and off-base cultural references distract us from the content so that we won't discover there's no material here that actually addresses the basic conceit of the show.

You can't present fantastic taste -- which is what fashion photography is, in the end -- underneath a frame that seems like an underinformed 19-year-old trying to encapsulate past decades. Using the unsophisticated idea of "the 1950s was this, then the 1960s was this, then..." is bad enough, but trying to then flesh that out with the weakest and least cool cultural touchstones reduces the show to a touristy, bland blanket, smothering fantastic images and clothes.

This is not a case of the Emperor wearing nothing. Rather, the Emperor turns out to be wearing a poncho, and hoping we'll say it's very nice.

It was, however, fun to see a connection to William Klein's Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? integrated into the show in the one room that worked. I just wished they'd paid more attention to what Klein was satirizing.

I enjoyed Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective much, much more.

Above: an iPhone snapshot at the Met today.

And Then There's More Fashion

Sure, I know I didn't thoroughly enjoy the recent ICP fashion exhibitions. And, yes, sure, I did complain a little about the AIPAD panel on fashion of photography.

But that's all in the past. Upcoming in the museums:

Model As Muse

"Exploring the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty, The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion focuses on iconic models of the twentieth century and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras."

Richard Avedon

"This exhibition will be the most comprehensive exploration to date of Avedon's fashion photography during his long career at Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Working closely with The Richard Avedon Foundation, ICP curator Carol Squiers and guest curator Vince Aletti will present new scholarship on the evolution and extraordinary, ongoing impact of his work."

Both are going to be great. I just know it.

It's a Walk Off

Well, Fashion Week came and went. I didn't go anywhere near the tents, watching instead from the safe distance of the living room television.

One of my students gave it a shot, though. Two articles I wrote about his experience went up today: an interview and some how-to hints:

Life at the End of the Runway

Seven Tips for Runway Photographers

Photography in the News

Any news stories about photography in the major newspapers? You bet.

New York City sued for harassing photographers

"The lawsuit was filed against the city and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on behalf of Arun Wiita, 26, a Columbia University graduate student of Indian descent who said he was handcuffed and detained after a police officer spotted him snapping pictures near a Manhattan subway station in July."

Work With Me, Baby

"FASHION is a stepchild, in photography no less than in other areas of the culture. The reach of the imagery it produces influences everything from trash television to presidential campaigns. Yet the slick work cranked out by the fashion machine is rarely taken seriously."

Back and Forth

The dialogue between photography and the world of fashion is a fascinating one. Michael Kors show at New York Fashion Week, for example, referenced the work of photographer Slim Aarons.

An article on Aaron's life is here, and David Patrick Columbia's visit with Aarons is worth checking out as well.

Dressed in Verse, Ace?

Since Monday's visit to Click Chic I've been asking a question that I more-or-less always ask: What is sophistication?

I ask because certain "seams" are painfully obvious to me -- in both the fashion photography I saw in that show and in most of the visuals I saw during New York Fashion week -- and I think you can learn as much by what doesn't work as from what does.

Here's what I'm saying: reference without depth is unsophisticated. A fashion photograph that calls to mind Helmut Newton's work, or Guy Bourdin's -- work that now forms a sort of fashion-photography canon, for better or worse -- cannot simply reference the older work and call it a day. A reference without some change of perspective is just bad copywork.

Putting up something derivative seems to me to imply a low opinion of the audience. It says "I know the reference, I'm copying the reference, but you wouldn't know it." Or perhaps it says "what do you mean, now go further?"

In any case, ironically, it's an attempt to be sophisticated that falls flat if the audience is, in fact, not stupid. I think real sophistication takes the opposite tack -- assuming an audience that knows, that wants to know, and that gets the joke.

A Last Note on Fashion

One of the things I find very odd about Fashion Week: it sounds like it would be great fun to be a runway shooter, perched at the key viewpoint, firing away and then quickly filing all the images for distribution to the world. Strangely, though, every runway shot I've seen this season looks more-or-less identical. And by coincidence I've spoken recently to two people who do exactly that kind of shooting -- and gotten the impression that the goal is in fact to provide that generic set of shots.... That's why the check gets cut. Still, it brings up an interesting question: what would a unique eye do with the runway situation?

I've seen some interesting "behind the scenes" coverage from Martin Fuchs and there have been books like Runway Madness. Yet I've never noticed any alternative take on the basic premise: a dress is paraded down a runway, seated people on each side. Click.

Are there no other ways to shoot this?

A Tiny Clarification

Just wanted to clarify my comments on fashion design and fashion photography: I'm for both.

Still, I think commercial work, advertising and that sort of thing is not -- despite a lot of claims made to the contrary, some by very fine thinkers -- the art of our time. I've studied the history of advertising and where photography fits into it, and taught classes where I've looked deeply at persuasion and the use of art, and I just don't agree that future art historians will feel fashion ads and political commercials mark the height of our era's art. They'll be studied as significant, as saying a lot about us, and as often pushing technique and style forward. Still, I don't think that type of work will be seen as the best of our time.

There's a fine line, of course, especially with the best work in those fields. Elliott Erwitt's portfolio mixes both "pure" street photography -- where a situation was found by chance and prepared luck -- with his advertising work, including images that are set up. That's fine.

Yet I'm adamant that there's a distinction -- that fashion designers can be brilliant, important and worth admiring, but that they don't address the same concerns as art. As well, while I like and admire fashion photographers -- and I think there's no reason someone can't be one of our best artists and shoot fashion too -- I don't think the boundaries and goals of the field allow exploration of the concerns of art.

Sometimes the point is to sell shoes.

Artlessly Artful

As Inigo Montoya said: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

While I'm fascinated, as a relatively new New Yorker, by Fashion Week and all that it entails, I am also amused by the conceit that it is Art.*

Fashion is great. It's part of our visual culture, and as a competitive and ever-churning field, it produces something worth watching. Some of its practitioners are fantastic. But please stop calling designers Artists. It's a different thing, with different concerns. Celebrate Fashion for what it is, but stop pretending or -- worse yet -- sincerely thinking it's art. Saying that only means you are insincere, or ill-informed.

And if you are going to have a show that is about the works of fashion shooters as works of art in their own right, be prepared for laughter if what you really show, weighed objectively, is just pretty / decent fashion shooting. It makes you look like you don't know what art is, and you probably do.

*(This is relatively rarely expressed by those succeeding in fashion -- and all-too-often expressed by those watching from the sidelines. Still, it is heard constantly, so it becomes fair game for critique, no?)

Say No More, Say No More

There is one place, of course, that people photograph themselves even more than in museums: at gallery openings.

I went to School of Visual Arts to see Click Chic: The Fine Art of Fashion Photography. I was entertained.

Above: cell phone picture of Fashion TV interview crew at work.

And So Fashion Week Begins

Every so often I run around the reservoir in Central Park. It's a pleasant loop. There was good weather today, so after I finished two short editing projects and put one of them in the hands of a bicycle messenger and the other in my stack of materials for tomorrow, I went for the run.

On the back stretch, by the West side of the park, I looked up to admire the trees and the usual collection of people. And then I noticed a large umbrella, black outside and silver inside, and a man holding a medium-format camera at waist level. Flash. As I ran on, I saw a model holding one of those poses photographers get out of posing books. Flash.

"No," I thought, "you've got to move her hip forward. You're doing it wrong."

And then I remembered why I hate that sort of thing: even if you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong.

Fashion Photography

And while we're on the subject of fashion photography, here's a portfolio I think you may enjoy:

Rodney Smith

Fashionesque

With New York Fashion Week approaching, here are three photography blogs that take a more-or-less documentary approach to fashion on the street. I think what I admire is that these sites depict the stylized in an unstyled manner: point the camera at the subject, let the interest emerge from that.

The Sartorialist

stpiduko

HEL Looks