Saturday, February 6, 2010

Hippies, Road Hogs and Circus Freaks Made High Fashion

So I had some free time on my hands today and as usual I found myself browsing through the hundreds of fashion photography prints on condenaststore.com. Amazing website by the way. You should really check it out... it's VERY expensive for poor college students like myself, but hey, I can dream right?

Anyways I stumbled upon this picture and it intrigued me.

There is just so much to look at in this photo. Twelve beautiful women, all very elegant. The longer you stare at this photo, the more you notice. This was definitely not your typical fashion editorial. Allow me to point out what I initially noticed...

-The women in this photo range in age, definitely different from the case in most modern day editorials.

-None of these women are interacting with each other.

-Only two of the models appear to be looking at the camera.

-They all look as though they are dressed for separate occasions.

and my favorite part of this photo...

-They all have cheek bones that could cut glass!

Who took this amazing portrait, you ask?...
None other than the infamous photographer Irving Penn. I should have known.

Yup, that's him. Dark and mysterious.

Irving Penn was a photography genius. As I researched more, I found many patterns in his work. He tended to use simple backdrops which forced the viewer to really focus on his subjects, everything from their clothes to their facial expressions. Also, he used natural lighting (sunlight) and seemed to always carefully arrange his subjects.

With a little help from google images, these were some other photos taken by Irving.





Although these are clearly portraits not fashion editorials, they still look like they could be straight out of the pages of Vogue. I love how this man could somehow manage to make a band of hippies, a group of road hogs and a bunch circus freaks look chic and totally high fashion. It just goes back to the common theme of our blog, which is that anything can be chic if you consider your life a Vogue editorial.

3 comments:

C A said...

Thank you for sharing this, i'm loving this site!

Corinne said...

that is an amazing site, thank you for the reference! and that type of photography is exactly the kind that i love to try and emulate in my own photography. i am enjoying this blog so much, keep up the great work! :)

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