User:Thalia de Jong/Synopsis On the marked change in fashion photography

ON THE MARKED CHANGE IN FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY by Olivier Zahm

Olivier Zahm is the very French fashion brute that founded Purple magazine, a semi-glossy glossy that has pushed the boundaries of fashion journalism and photography ever since it first came out in the early nineties.

In this essay Zahm, amongst many things a photographer himself, talks about the ways in which he thinks that fashion photography can transform itself from the monotonous copying machine that it has long become. The goal is to become more sensitive to a most important element in fashion: the body in the clothes. And inside the body, the person. As each person is without question unique, any photo series portraying that body, should be equally unique.

Mister Zahm of course can't help but bring up pornography as a source of inspiration for fashion photography to his liking. Subjectivity is most important to him and since pornography is all about the subject, seducing and exciting the viewer, Olivier is a fan. This pornographic approach is kind of hard to combine with the way in which advertising glamourizes objects. But since this objectification in advertising does have an aesthetic quality that is most important in fashion, the artists that manage to combine these different approaches will be very important in the future of fashion photography.