A must-watch film if you’ve never seen it, the 1996 Richard Avedon documentary, Darkness and Light is pure escapism.
If you only have five minutes, watch the scene at around 21 minutes where Polly Mellen describes the legendary Nastassja Kinski Vogue shoot (above) involving a serpent’s kiss. Her storytelling is almost as dramatic as the shoot itself. (more…)
There’s been a lot of talk about gender identity and masculinity in the last year and it’s going to continue through 2020. This exhibition looks promising. Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography opens at The Barbican next month, featuring work from over 50 artists, photographers and filmmakers, including Sunil Gupta (above), Richard Avedon, Jeremy Deller, Karlheinz Weinberger and Collier Schorr.
OK, I love it already! (more…)
“Being on set with Avedon was heaven. I mean, it was scary at first. I would be styling and he would say, ‘What’s the surprise?’ The surprise? What the fuck is he talking about? We were shooting shoes, and so I told him that the model was wearing mauve socks. The rest of the clothes were olive and drab, but I styled in these socks. Dick asks the guy to pull his pant leg up a little bit so you could see the sock, and that was the punch of the picture. With Avedon, there’s always something to delight you.”
A brief history of fashion editing is going on at Into The Gloss, courtesy of Paul Cavaco. Remember when Allure was incredible in the late 90s/early 00s? That was Paul…
Loewe:
Masters of Leather on Nowness.com.
Loewe has done a lovely job of highlighting three of this year’s biggest macro trends – craft, heritage and luxury – in this short film by Matthew Donaldson for Nowness (ah ‘fashion film’, there’s another tick). Using Richard Avedon’s In The American West as a visual reference (oh to have a copy of this collectable tome), it’s a celebration of the leather workers’ graft and craft in creating the signature Amazona bag. (more…)
