Dear shaw. i am getting jealous. i thought that i was your london email friend and now all these youngsters are smoozing you. and, you seemed to omit my greatness from your list of the greats. heads will roll.

give me a clue-like you know-do a columbo-"just one more thing"!renting your gaff out?on the move here...again..from near the cirque dhiver(location of avedons famous elephant fashion pics!)to....?maybe a large space in st.denis...the dangerous banilieux.

It would be interesting to know what your ages are. I can fully respect all the photographers mentioned here. They all had a Part to play and were all instrumental in creating new movements within thier time but I still feel that images like Horsts famous un-done corset do not reflect the mood of society today. I wish they did because I think the world was a much more romantic place to be back then. But there is no way that those images reflect todays society. They may be relevent to your style of work and I can apreciate your passion but they do NOT reflect social change within the new mellenium! Fashion photography is about 3 basic things... 1.Youth and everything that youth stands for and by that I mean rebellion and s**t loads of it! 2.The standard of gloss and studio Lighting achievable today i.e Nick Knight 3.The sort of unobtainable beauty that society will always wish to ba a part of. That is what sells clothes and that is what society wants today.

Hey Shaw...

"i think the mistake most kids make is to imitate whats in the mags right now...instead of doing the OPPOSITE.....plus so many kids taking pics for the wrong reasons not looking at it as a lifes vocation but as a lifestyle...its been said before i know but it needs repeating"

Agreed, but I've come to find that this is part of an artists journey. I personally went over my favourite photogrphers works with a fine tooth comb as I'm technically quite pedantic and wanted to know "how the hell did Paolo do that painterly light thing". I experimented, learned, and take that on for future. The first learning that a human ever does as an infant, is imitation.

I think what separates an artist from a person who creates nice pictures (for want of better terminolgy-lol) is that day when you step away from imitaition and look with your own minds eye. The day that you decide...you know what, i want to do things my way, I have something to say. That take s a certain level of confidence to do that. You also need something to say in the first place...which at the end of the day is determined by in my opinion, by life experience. Some have better methods for communicating what's in side their heads. Some get all that sooner than others.

i'm fuming now. wrong. wrong. wrong.

Patch? Please go to college and learn something, fashion photography might be about those '3 things' for you but that's a ridiculous statement.

1. What does age have to do with anything? 'Youth' has no more of a corner on 'truth' than 'age' - you can be brilliant, or an idiot, at any time of life.
2. Lighting isn't everything
3. 'Society' wants lots of things. And they're not all beautiful. Society is made up of a bunch of individuals, and what indivual photographers want over and above what their clients do actually counts a lot.

Down with homogenisation!

we met independently. mask. wigs. you won. but i shoulda.

Indeed, thanks x

tal- mask,wigs,you mailed me about renting your gaf(place) out in sarf london?.....yeah ben im not saying imitation is bad at college etc.......its like i dunno...say hendrix-right?he learnt every style then became a virtuiso...like he started in a soul band....but to go somewere with faux nick night pictures....whats the point?if they want- that they can ask nick himself rather than using a poor copy,thats what im saying.etc