Live Webcast 27-29 November 2003 Text by Penny Martin
(The By Arrangement webcast has now finished.)
27 November 2003 15:00hrs
THE BRIEF
Does the sight of models receiving bouquets in fashion show finalés
put you in mind of amateur women gardeners? It does Jonathan
Kaye, who upon seeing the glorious cyan-sprayed flowers in Martin
Margiela's uplifting Spring/Summer '04 show, was sent reaching for
his copy of 'The New Mauve', a literary tribute to Constance Spry.
Evangelical florist and icon of pre-war femininity in flux, Constance
Spry provided the inspiration for 'By Arrangement', this first project to
be broadcast from the new, live SHOWstudio site. Kaye showed
images of Spry's flower arrangements to Nick Knight during
'pre-production' discussions for W magazine shoot, viewing their
gently kitsch, home-spun aesthetic as a valuable trope with which to
re-phrase the floral theme running throughout the S/S '04 collections.
Today and for the next three days, Knight and Kaye photograph the
clothes amid the most decorative, floral context imaginable. Set
designer Michael Howells has constructed an environment
reminiscent of a mid-twentieth century Women's Institute meeting
hall-come Cecil Beatonesque bower, into which stylist Simon Foxton
has invited leading contemporary florists to do live flower-arranging
demonstrations to contextualise the floral garments. In contrast,
Knight's brief to his team is to strip the images down to the most
spare of portraits, with subtle reference to the architecture of the
mid-nineteenth century portrait studio in their composition.
Witness Knight's visual economy and Kaye's restrained approach to
glamour, counterpointed by Foxton's sophisticated horticultural
excess via two rolling webcams that will capture the progress
throughout the shoot. First up, it's Prada... [View image]
27 November 2003 19:00hrs
SETTING THE SCENE
Polaroids stacking up on the polyboards flanking the photo set
represent the passage of time as much as they document the shots
taken. Perhaps predictably with this maverick set of image-makers,
the series of images amassed already reveals a departure from
some of the initial intentions for the shoot.
The gilt chair positioned centre stage at the beginning of the day,
indicative of the stock props of luxury 1860s portrait studios such as Camille
Silvy's or Disdéri's, has since been relegated to the wings. Tracing
his fingers over the slivers of mantelpieces and edges of tables that
skim the margins of Spry's pictures in the source book, Michael
Howells explains how the floral props and furniture initially envisaged
to adorn the set seemed over-mannered when introduced on the day.
'We wanted to give a sense of the interior creeping in without
overstatement. Nick and I realised the narrative was most effective
when created by shadows of the props rather than the objects
themselves'.
Featuring a girlish yellow chiffon Ferretti dress and the inspirational
Margiela flowers themselves, the series from which will come the
second shot reveals how this shadow-play introduces a sense of
narrative that transforms a simple studio portrait into a dramatic
psychological profile. The spectre of the set - cast by shadows over the body of the model - is most present in its absence.
[View image]
27 November 2003 22:30hrs
MODEL PROJECTION
When you're sweet sixteen and fair of face, you don't give much
thought to whether you're acting out other people's fantasies. After all,
dressing up in vertiginous heels, slinky evening dresses (minus a
coat) and even donning erotic kitten masks are mandatory elements
of nights spent trailing around after boys or waiting in rain-drenched
nightclub queues.
But what about when you're cornered -literally- in the nook of a false
wall with four men crowded round you, encouraging you to arch your
back, tilt your head, part your lips or face the wall? This, of course, is
the everyday experience of model Gemma Ward, subject of shots
three and four of today's shoot. Though a newcomer to the industry
-Ward left school to start modelling this August- the young girl
doesn't flinch as the photographic assistants circle and the stylists
primp and fuss.
It's a story tabloids across the land thrive upon: fresh-faced schoolgirl
from the styx is preyed upon by iniquitous fashion types and
transforms into a gaunt, jaded projection-object within months. Only,
that couldn't be further from the truth. Daily Mail readers will be
surprised to learn that sixteen year old Gemma is acutely aware of
the reality of her profession. She may be barely a child, but this
beautiful young woman sees modelling as similar to the acting she
has been doing for years and uses this training as a coping strategy
for the demands of the job. 'When you're standing in front of the
camera, you don't think about yourself' she says, 'it's not you, it's the
character they're asking for, it's the clothes'.
In photography, intention is never the same as meaning. Particularly
with fashion photography (aspirational images of our future selves, if
only we could afford the gear and lose the weight), the images mean what we as viewers
project onto them. It is crucial, however, that the politics of representation and anxieties regarding the social effect of imagery are not confused with the culture of image production. Models, like any other workers, are vulnerable to exploitation but this is not intrinsic to the profession. Some employers are honorable; others not. Next time you find yourself expressing concern for the 'poor' high-earning, assured and driven women in the pictures
you are so readily consuming, ask yourself precisely whose fantasies it is they
are acting out.
[View image]
28 November 2003 15:30hrs
THE CLOTHES: IT'S A QUESTION OF TASTE
It's an approach defined by what it is not. Ask Jonathan Kaye to
describe how he develops a fashion story and he'll reel off a list of
things he 'can't bear': too many accessories, too much decoration,
too much sex, in fact too much of anything. Suggest the construction
of a narrative or the introduction of a theme and he shoots you a look
like youāve fed him poison. 'Overt themes in fashion stories can look
modern in a few cases, but most of the time they look like cheap
repetitions of the original reference. Dated'.
This is fashion styling governed by a respectful regard for clothes:
Kaye's textiles background foregrounds his supremely minimal
method of presenting clothing. Selecting the key pieces of the
season only - and on this point he is immovable - and presenting
them free from adornment, Kaye gives 'voice' to the fabrics and the
garments' construction. As model Gemma Ward observed yesterday,
clothing can determine characterisation and when left alone to do so,
it develops its own sense of drama.
For 'By Arrangement', Kaye's key pieces speak of the Spring/Summer
'04 season's overarching story: a return to a modest, youthful
femininity that has been curiously absent over the past four seasons.
Gone are the edgy, urban separates that gave rise to journalist's
claims that 'Menswear's the new Womenswear'; making way for
pretty dresses and lady-like shoes.
The neutral, flesh tones and translucent fabrics that lend themselves
so well to Nick Knight's re-working of inter-war Deco sensibilities in
this shoot, characterised the collections. The pale pink seamless
draped dresses at Lanvin (pictured here with a darling feline mask)
were amongst the most covetable examples of understated glamour.
The chocolate brown pleated chiffon Prada prom dress that began
the shoot demonstrated how Mrs Prada, like Kaye, recognises the
fine line between modesty and frumpery. 'For the transparency of the
chiffon to work without being too sexy, and the shapes to work without
being dowdy', Kaye contends, 'casting is key. We chose young girls
with an "other-worldly" beauty'.
To carry off all-out nudity (seen in the stocking tops accompanying
Comme des Garcons' amazing variation on skirts) or suggestive
symbols of fecundity (such as the groaning buds adorning the
showpiece dress from Olivier Theyskens' inspirational collection for
Rochas), it is imperative that the pieces are not made to fight against
mannered contexts, other garments or glitzy fripperies. This season's
fashion is at its most directional, it seems, when it is carefully made
to appear undirected. [View image]
29 November 2003 14:30hrs
GROOMING
'To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up' wrote Wilde. In
doing so, he accurately summarised the challenge that a shoot such
as this poses to the hair and make-up team. When Knight and Kaye
requested that the models appear 'natural, as they come into the
studio', rather than guaranteeing the team a day with their feet up, it
required a shift in focus from embellishment to preparation.
'Most of my time is spent preparing the girls' skin' says make-up artist
Val Garland. 'The object of a shoot like this, is to have as little
re-touching afterwards as possible. With the photographic film Nick
uses, you see everything on the skin. Every hair. It will all be there.'
Nail designer Marian Newman concurs. 'It's about making these
innocent young girls look like they have had no assistance. The irony
is that they do require assistance. Most of them have had false nails
left on and then taken off. It takes work to make them look neat, clean
and healthy. It's high-maintenance, this low-maintenance'.
Far from being confined to fashion photography, make-up has been a
component of studio portraiture since mass imagery's very
beginning. Manuals for the hordes of professional photographers
starting up studios in the 1850s and 60s instructed practitioners how
to apply pigment to freckles to avoid their yellow hue printing in black
in the resultant portrait. Curiously anticipating the role of the stylist by
120 years, several Victorian studios even kept a wardrobe filled with
garments of a suitable hue so that the images' tonal range would not
be unbalanced owing to the silver emulsion on the negative's acute
sensitivity to blue light.
More than smoothing over the already perfect countenances of these
young mannequins, however, the whole process performs another
vital act of preparation in contemporary fashion photography. As
make-up is applied and hair arranged, the hair and make-up
creatives ease the girls into the roles they will adopt on set and
'groom' up their performances. 'When you put make-up on older,
more experienced girls like Kate or Erin, they immediately recognise
the character you are suggesting to them' explains Garland. 'These
young girls today haven't yet learnt what's inside them. By
emphasising their purity and giving them a neutral look, you actually
see them'.
It is this desire for the most perceptive character study and instinct for
the most elegant final image that identifies the finest photographic
team-members. The paradox is that it also demands these
image-makers to make perhaps the greatest sacrifice: to conceal
evidence of their range and abilities for the good of the whole. 'The
pictures are not about hair' concedes hair-stylist Sam McKnight,
'hair's just an organic part of the final image'. What he refers to as
'raw shampooed, "harsh" hair' ensures that girls look as individual
and characterful as possible. It also eradicates any trace of
McKnight's own presence. 'A few pins is all. As soon as it looks like
Iāve been there, I change it'. [View image]
29 November 2003 19:00hrs
PHOTOGRAPHY: THE NUDE OBJECTIVITY
Having started with one vision of Modernism - the tight, feminine
floral arrangements of Constance Spry - the photo story at the heart
of 'By Arrangement' has blossomed into another. Throughout the
shoot, the delicate flowers gracing the nude and flesh-tone fabrics
have gradually been overlaid with geometric shafts of light evoking
the dynamism and grandeur of the early European Avant-Garde and
late American Deco periods.
Knight's conflation of two apparently conflicting modes of Modernist
photography is impressive. The 'straight' photography advocated by
large-format camera enthusiasts Paul Strand and Edward Weston
survives, miraculously unflattened by the vigorous, prismatic light
formations so evocative of the cameraless, Vorticist imagery of Alvin
Langdon Coburn. Though the two movements were ideologically
opposed in their day - the truth of the natural world set against the
iniquity of the machine age - in these fashion portraits, the Formalist
pattern frees-up rather than constrains the models. Graphic
abstractions add drama to the portraits, allowing the models to
contribute something far quieter: an intimate trace of their youthful
inner-selves.
Cleverly echoed by Michael Howells in the conical, spherical and
Surrealist flower arrangements juxtaposed against the fashion
images in SHOWstudio's broadcast, Knight's sensitive appropriation
of New Objectivity motifs lends 'straight' portraiture the dynamic
elegance so lacking in much of contemporary fashion photography.
[View image]