#27: The Fashion Images Installation
About 12 years ago, I was asked to do an exhibition of my fashion images and I think showing fashion images in the realm of a museum is always, it's kind of problematic because fashion images are made for the pages of a fashion magazine or as or on the streets, in billboards or online by now.
But then to have a fashion picture and frame it and put it on the walls of a museum, somehow that doesn't feel right for me. I always still have a very clear distinction in my own heads between my art and my fashion. So when I was asked to do this exhibition about my fashion work, I was still intrigued. And I thought let's think of a way to show my fashion work, but still in this kind of fleeting way in a way that's would do justice to the idea of fashion, which is it's like quicksilver, it's there, and then it's gone. And I think there is also a very interesting side to this to this kind of disposable image. I decided to, instead of frame my pictures and put them on the walls as if it were art, I decided to make these installations and projecting the images.
So that one is shows the first kind of 17 years of my fashion work. The left hand side is the last 12 years or so.
What I've always liked about fashion is that it always, I gave me a way to really experiment with photography and also to participate to with other people. These collaborations are so fruitful. And if you work with other people, creative people, they bring stuff to the table that I could have never thought of myself. So it's really such an interesting process. Bring together a bunch of people for just one day or maybe a few days and creating something together. And also back in the days, it was before internet when I started a as a photographer. So one of the only ways to get your work out into the world was by publishing.
Fashion photography was like a very logical choice for me because of my past in with the fashion and also working as a model, et cetera, and my interest in fashion. My friends from art school who graduated as fashion designers by then they started asking me to photograph their collections.
And this was in the mid 90s, so it was the time of Grunge. It was a very interesting time for independent magazines, like<Dazed & Confused>、<i-D>、<The Face>、<Self Service>、<Purple Magazine>. Those were all magazines who treated photography in a very new and exciting way, with interesting kind of editing and layout. It was also the time of this kind of Snapshot Photography, like Nan Goldin and Araki, people who made you feel like you could actually do a fashion shoot in your own kitchen. And it would be fine.
You don't need all the glamour. The glamour was very much like the 80s, which feels very distant and very beautiful, but suddenly in the mid 90s, felt like you could do this kind of documentation of your own friends and yourself and your family, et cetera, and still make work that felt interesting and new.
Most of the work that you see here was made as editorials, and especially for editorials where you have a lot of freedom, you can experiment more. I've always chosen to work for these kind of titles, which give me a lot of freedom to experiment and trade photography in an interesting way and less commercial. Some of the images that you see here are actually shots for commercial brands, but most of them are editorial.