There are some essays in the Dress Me Up, Dress Me Down project in the archive that might be useful to you (by Peter Saville, Jonathan de Villiers, Ann Sofie Back, Phillipe Garner etc.).
I’m photographer working with models in the field of fashion . In the beginning of my career I was surprised how close the sex and the fashion are. Later I saw that “sex” is too soft word to use. The pornography is fucking the fashion’s ass and the problem is that we the artists like this a lot. But actually everything I’ve seen by now is art enough not to be ugly. I think that it’s normal to dig for the taboos of the fashion photography. The problem for me is how the end consumer of our work takes it. Does the people out of the business gets the idea. And in other hand the pornography has evolved to close to the art level. This is my opinion only. And finally isn’t it pornography to ask 18 years old model to show you tits while weaving fashion bag between her high heeled legs in stockings and mini skirt with “fuck me” expression on her face? And since the manufacturer of the bag is making profit by selling his product using that image it’s same like porn. The serious difference is that in the fashion photography we’re not showing the act of fucking using peoples genitals – and thanks God we don’t! Everything is just the deepness of the dirty human imagination. The porn have no imagination game to propose to the user. Fashion photography is teasing, provoking, begging, forbidding or whatever the artist have to come up with in the name of creativity and art - regarding sex, flesh pleasures and fetish. Amen :)
Having a fairly good knowledge of Mainstream pornography [can't let topics like this go untaken in college classes] and Fashion Photography, I'd just like to say:
There is room in Fashion Photography for Pornography to break through. But there is no Fashion in Mainstream Pornography. Not tasteful fashion anyway.
If I had a dime for every time I'd see a series with a guy or girl completely naked wearing sneakers and socks I'd be rich by now.
The new Lee ads, photographed by Terry Richardson, have brought up some interesting links with the famous Calvin Klein campaigns.
http://commercial-archive.com/132638.php
From a piece in The Commercial Closet: "Of course, fashion advertising is usually about sex, but Klein has many times created media storms over his ads. (...) ...such advertising efforts are disingenuous, since their intent is to incite publicity, and are not unusual from fashion advertisers with small media budgets such as Klein, Diesel and Benetton."
http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=847
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/handouts/ethics/calvin_klein_case_study.cfm
Anyway, the Lee ads seem to have been causing a stir in Australia, but are the pictures really porn-style disturbing or is the shock factor a 'by association' thing simply because Terry Richardson is involved?
Welcome back Flux, I will have to check out the new work by Terry Richardson.
Hi Chris, I've been around but not saying much - only just stating to get the hang of the new forum, and trying to cut down my own tendency to excess verbiage...
Anyway, the first link I posted (above) shows Richardson's Lee ads (if you haven't found them there already).
P.S. In case you wondered why I posted here rather than on your own thread with similar title, it's because that one has (and you say it yourself) gone off at a complete tangent. Keep this one on topic? ;p
Yes you are right. I think this was the campaign that was profiled in Rolling Stone magazine during the controversy , using large pictures for the centre spread in the magazine. I tried to axes your web link to the subject in the library but the net sensor went nuts.
