Hello Nick, it is a pleasure to speak to you again. I loved finished editorial for Gareth’s FASH OFF in i-D. In regard to your query, the exact same thought has been running through my head for some time. In most cases film is a medium that demands our attention for at least 90 minutes, we become very involved with the characters and very easily start to develop emotions for them (depending on the story etc). So perhaps our emotions become the overwhelming factor whilst watching film and thus sub-consciously excepting any 'co-incidentals' i.e special effects or even cgi animations (children’s animations for example can also be moving) and of course music! Of course fashion photography is a medium that can evoke an array of human emotions as you well know but perhaps the nature of looking at a still image allows too many sceptics time to turn away before their emotions become the over riding factor. Maybe moving images demand that time from the viewer for their sub-conscious acceptance of make belief and fantasy. Allowing a perfect podium for your moving fashion! This is just a thought. But out of interest, who do you find to be the hardest people to convince? Thanks again, Patrick Titheridge.

"Hollywood movies boil down to making the viewer feel good by flattering him, reassuring him, plugging into his or her unfulfilled adolescent fantasies. It’s really no different from the way an ad campaign works. If you want to sell your SUV to middle-aged men with big bellies and boring jobs, convince them that it will bring adventure back into their lives. If you want to sell it to soccer moms, convince them that it will keep their children safe. If you want a blockbuster film, you just have to plug into the communal fantasies of a big enough demographic."

more here

http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/indievision/pa3text.htm

Perhaps it's because photography was born of a need to record something that had actually happened (early police documentation, journalism etc) and to distill a temporary event into something that would last longer and with time not become distorted in memory. People understand that a film is falsely constructed to serve a purpose and that this purpose (entertainment) is a break from reality.

I think also the public is slightly over-sensitive about playing with reality in a photo as it's been somewhat hidden (retouching etc) so that its purpose has been to deceive instead of openly admit its false construction (catching bullets mid air in a long black leather jacket). Your work has always had a constructed narrative that lends itself more to film as opposed to fashion photography being about simply displaying product...

I would have thought that people would be increasingly more receptive to the fashion image as something that is distorted and has the same license to play with reality as film.
The digitization of photography has moved it from being a tangible negative/print and thus more difficult to alter, to information that can be shifted around and reformed without ever being a physical (read: real) entity. The ubiquity of manipulation programs such as photoshop show how easily this is done and consequently, how easily reality can be constructed in a photo...

Humm. ?.....I'm wondering....and according to my own experience I never really thought about it...But if I'm honest to myself, I would say it is because there is no real story to deepen our brains into a 'plot' or because in a fashion image there are no characters to sympathize with ...Sort of looking to a reference point....perhaps because our subconscious is to aware that a fashion image has ‘brutally’ become part of make believe and we distrust it ?, again while a film we unconsciously ‘want’ to believe against better judgement and because it will take us away from reality, a fashion image is at disadvantage due to the time it needs to ‘hypnotize’ us .....Just guessing ...On the other hand we know to well that a fashion image is just a sort of packaging of advertising to make us buy a product therefore we distrust it and ‘manipulating’ a fashion image just emphasizes our distrust because manipulation has become to obvious ?....all guesses but it would be interesting to hear more about what other people think.......on the other hand I would never get upset about it...just take it for its artistic, aesthetic and imaginative content !..... But I wonder as a matter of curiosity if Keanu Reeves would have the same effect on people if he appeared in a fashion add catching bullets for an Armani add ?.. would he lend more quality power to that suit or make it comical to look at ?

Keanu Reeves - Copyright Subtracion Khoi Vinh

Using your example, when people watch The Matrix, they know they are watching a work of fiction - however when someone picks up Vogue, they are very aware that they are looking at an advert and if that advert is unbelievable it will, quite understandably, provoke the reponse you describe. Maybe, as photographers, we detach the art from the sales pitch and no longer attach the same value to the pre-season garments on display that the reader does.
I'm not sure that the average magazine browser appreciates the use of narrative and continuity in fashion imagery - which is a shame.
Also, as Joanne K mentioned, the public perception of a finished photographic image is quite rigid and maybe this is where the problem lies - is it time that the definition of what we do should change? With the ever-increasing amount of digital post-production employed within the industry - to the point where the original photographic image is sometimes no longer recognisable in the final image - should this style of fashion photography be renamed fashion illustration? (Not that this would necessarily change public perception). This is probably a whole new thread in itself.

Love your work Nick and its good to hear your words in here. I guess that the saying that the camera never lies is far from the truth in todays world.
Wen an images like the ones in the films of today are so obvously in some cases so far fetched then I guess that it is easier for people to read as fantasy.

But can we really compare photography with film ?.....photography is just a moment frozen in time while film is totally full of dynamics that demands our total attention to follow a story .... A picture in Vogue allows us more than plenty of time to analyse it even if we are not interested in such image ... and then add to that the fact of the public’s tacit awareness of how far can a picture be manipulated in order for the photographer to get away with it ?..... however beautiful, poetic, mysterious, engaging etc, might be .....