Where does the great fashion photograph go from here?

For many theorists, particularly Roland Barthes, photography is an embodiment of the past- a way to capture a fleeting moment, to sit with it, to mourn it, to pick it apart. This had been true for me over the last year; I would spend hours living through my camera roll. FOMO for a life I did live, breathe and entirely exist in, constantly telling myself and anyone who would listen that I would do practically anything to relive what felt like the last days of my girlhood.

It’s that very peculiarity of photography that Barthes obsesses over; the photograph is mournful by nature, showing us a glimpse of the past, a familiar nostalgia, without enabling us to re-enter.

This is where the fashion photograph differs; rather than solely capturing the past, it constructs an alternative reality, one that is not limited by the constraints of the truth. Photographers give themselves the power to build narratives and capture them through their lens, and we buy into that dream; if there’s tangible proof of beauty, surely it exists. It doesn’t matter how far-fetched that dream could be. If art is considered literature, photography is often journalism and fashion photography marries them together deliciously. Fashion photography is storytelling at its very core.

For all its depth and complexity, the fashion image is still treated as secondary in traditional art institutions, often part of separate one-off shows and rarely acquired within permanent collections. The more conventional art historians turn their nose up towards the medium as its primary purpose is to sell clothes, for commerce. And how could something as vulgar as commerce be included in the echelons of highbrow art as if the price of a Banksy isn’t the first subject of discussion after an auction? The art world contradicts itself, but I digress.

When fashion photography was introduced to the covers of Vogue in the early 20th century, it was still a niche curiosity, one that transformed into the primary way through which fashion continues to be disseminated globally. The fashion photograph reflected the rapid changes in society, and mid-way through the century, image was powerful enough to sway opinion and enforce the new normal. The new normal that suited the powers that be. For instance, the September 1943 edition of American Vogue instructed women to take up jobs to free a man to fight. Soon enough, in the 1950s, these same women were asked by magazines to wear Dior and return to civility- as housewives, of course. It’s important to point out that at this moment in time, a very small number of magazines dominated the fashion system. These creative teams possessed all the influence; they dictated trends and told their readers what to eat, wear and how to be a woman.

A scene from the 1957 film Funny Face springs to mind. In it, Miss Prescott, the editor in chief of a fictional fashion magazine named Quality, sings about the colour pink. The opening song ‘Think Pink!’ (and in my opinion the best number from the whole musical) is all about how she decides that pink is the only colour any woman should wear that season. This may seem farfetched today, but the character was modelled after the real editor in chief of Harpers Bazaar, Diana Vreeland, indicative of how influential the fashion magazine and the images that it contained were.

The 1950s and early 1960s are still widely considered the golden age of fashion photography, and the photographers from this era are often cited as the greatest fashion photographers. Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Louise Dahl-Wolfe are among those who are often referred to as the “real artists” within this medium, and there’s no denying that they did create beautiful images, but they rarely challenged public consciousness.

Halfway through the sixties, all of this changed, toppling this supposedly golden age on its head. A different type of model was introduced within fashion- the ingenue, the girl, Twiggy. Discarding their mother’s wardrobes and the fashion rules of decades past, they now wore mini skirts popularised by Mary Quant and ran around boutiques such as Biba, pulling out new outfits for a new swinging London. One half of fashion imagery was dedicated to capturing youth culture by British photographers such as Brian Duffy and David Bailey. In contrast, the other half was still controlled by Diana Vreeland, who was now at the helm of Vogue. She would send out photographers and models to these outrageous locations, reenacting films and encapsulating old-world glamour for those who clung to the more avant-garde covers. By the 1970s, Black women were on the pages and even the cover of mainstream fashion magazines, something historians point out during any discussion on 20th-century fashion. The fact that these predominantly white publications now featured models of colour indicated the broader social movements of the time. According to Eugene Shinkle, author of the book Fashion as Photograph, “The history of fashion photography is the history of a growing confidence in its ability to comment explicitly on the wider world, Initially, it was reluctant to engage explicitly with politics, but since the end of the ’60s it has become more openly, overtly and unabashedly political.”

I am sceptical about applauding these magazines for doing the bare minimum partly because they were motivated by economics (when are they not) and partially because they were fitting people of colour into white narratives versus giving Black and Brown photographers and artists the freedom to take reign and create their own version of beauty, whatever that might be. This remains to be the state of fashion photography, with a few universally known exceptions such as Edward Enningful, editor of British Vogue and Tyler Mitchell, the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for American Vogue in its 128-year history.

Beyoncé For Vogue’s September Issue 2018 shot by Tyler Mitchell

I personally could not care less about these bigger fashion institutions; they have proven time and time again that they absolutely do not care about our art. My problem is with the positioning or lack thereof of non-white image makers within the fashion photography canon. Fashion photography is seen through a western lens and as a western phenomenon. The “golden age of photography” was all-white hands photographing white faces wearing clothes designed by white-owned couture houses. Non-western countries could not compete with the massive editorial budgets French, British and American periodicals possessed at the time, so they became the “exotic” backdrop that the white creative team used to create the fashion dream.

Limiting the scope and study of mainstream fashion photography to the editorial plays a huge role in why Black photographers are so often left out of the conversation. They have shaped and documented global fashion culture just as profoundly as anyone else. James Van Der Zee is a notable photographer whose photography from the 1920s and 1930s documented the Harlem Renaissance; beyond capturing the personal and cultural lives of Black Americans who resided in the neighbourhood, his photography was deeply reflective of fashion culture at the time. His photographs of weddings in Harlem are a favourite and embody an old-world glamour that transports me to the age of the flapper better than any other photo series does.

I am also a fan of Malick Sidibe’s and O. P. Sharma’s work, both photographers practised outside America, but the similarities end there. Sidibe was concerned with documenting youth culture in Bamako, the capital of Mali, from the 50s to the 70s, while Sharma’s work was about dissecting the human form, often by playing around with light and geometric patterns. These photographers are detached from the label of fashion photography, and maybe they would prefer it this way but unintentionally or not make me question- what really constitutes fashion photography?

Occasionally, I fall into the trap of believing that the fashion image is still a slender white woman being shooed around different locations in Paris in full couture and posing not so casually in front of a church. This preconception continues to loop through my head like a broken record. But, what about the intimate moments of our life, the intersection between our lived experiences and the garments we deem worthy of living in. That’s what Malick Sidibe did so well; he captured the outfits his subjects danced in, fell in love in, had their first kisses in, he caught realness and emotional connection, and the clothes translate this emotion incredibly well. Yes, his photography was documentary style, but who made the rule that fashion photography was relegated to the studio anyway? These photographs deserve to be put alongside photo spreads from magazines to be studied and analysed as part of the fashion photography canon just as much as any other photograph.

Malick Sidibé took photographs at parties from the 1960s to the early 1970s.

In 2021, Fashion imagery exists on Instagram. Not on gallery walls or in thick, hardbound photo books or consumed through glossy fashion magazines but sandwiched between brightly coloured affirmation posts, photo dumps by acquaintances and models off-duty. Oversaturated is an understatement in describing our relationship with image and video, but that doesn’t make the work being produced any less relevant. In my opinion, the golden age of fashion photography isn’t just what Avedon created or Beaton; it’s not Glen Lucford’s era Gucci campaigns either. I would argue we’re living through it. The photographs are hiding in plain sight; we just need to give it due diligence.

This golden age exists in the work of Kshtij Kankaria, who borrows from his own experience growing up in a small town in India. It exists in Nadine Ijewere’s photographs that explore her Jamaican-Nigerian heritage. It exists in Ib Kamara’s artistic vision that reimagines 16th-century art. This golden age isn’t defined by a singular view of glamour and luxury; it contains multitudes.

By Zara Afthab

(she/they)

Edited by Makella Ama