Hi martinb,
It's funny you should mention that. I was thinking about Annie Leibovitz and where she might fit into the recent posts.
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You are right. As a gay male I tend to take more of an interest in male photographers. Have you seen the work of Candis Falmer, Candis is a fashion photographer who studied at the College Of Art and Design in Plymouth as I did, where she specialised in under water photography before re locating to London to break in to the industry, as I did not. She has worked for the Times magazine suplement as well as other magazines. At the moment she is producing a book of under water photographs of celebrities. Have you also seen the work of one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, not a fashion photographer but a major influence to a lot of later documentary and fashion photographers, Leni Refanstral( possibly spelt wrong worked for Hitler during the second world war and produced an outstanding film based on the olympics. becouse of her links with Hitler she found it dificalt to break away from the link. In her 90s she lied about her age so that she could take up skuber diving and specialise in under water photography and film. Truly an outstanding Lady there is a website to her work which you can find through google, the same with Candis.
And THIS is a topic that I've been waiting for?
Other than Kate Garner, who I’ve already mentioned elsewhere in this forum, has to be said I can’t think of many biggies, though I know there are plenty of women photographers working out there. It reminds me of something Nigel Slater wrote in this weekend’s Sunday supplement, an issue dedicated to women in the food industry, saying “While the men (...) seem to get all the publicity it is often the women who are quietly making the difference... while the guys (come on, we all know the culprits) make a great song and dance about everything, it is the women who are rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it”. Perhaps this could be equally well applied to the fashion business, given that there are so few, relatively speaking, who are 'names'? As well as photographers, there are lots of women stylists etc that designers sometimes openly admit not being able to do without, and who seem to act as muses of sorts. And I like the empowering thing that’s going on here at the moment with Liberty Ross. It’s not the first time I’ve seen models given a more creative role, but it’s by far the most interesting (last time for me it was a German contemporary artist, now dead and whose name temporarily escapes me, who organised for a crowd primarily made up of French blokes the spectacle of two naked dancers pummelling etc piles of formless clay – a sort of posh mud wrestling…)
Other than that, I wonder what someone like Diane Arbus would have been doing now if she hadn’t killed herself. The one commercial, magazine fashion shoot she did I know of (kids clothes) has been exhibited in museums since, on an equal standing with the rest of her work – might she eventually have had a big impact on fashion photography, if she’d gone back to it? If so, what would contemporary fashion photography be like now? What else would she be doing, in fashion and in parallel? Just trying to imagine brings all sorts of interesting possibilities to mind.
i dont think diane arbus would be doing fashion ,she started her career doing fashion work.i think theres lots of female photographers around,corrine day,diedre ocallaghan,alice,hawkins,bettina reims,.but possibly the most innovative and exceptional female photographer around is a woman called katy grannan..who really seems to me to be going beyond arbus and taking the photographic portrait to an OUTSTANDING new place.
Bettina Rheims doesn't do anything for me. But Katy Grannan does, WOW! And I'm ashamed, I'd sort of forgotten about Corinne Day, but isn't that just the way...
List is still short guys!