New York Fashion Week, for Vogue. Photo by Victoria Will.
In my opinion this gets the palm as one of the best fashion shots ever made. At least of the year.
Granted, I might be cheating—we all have styles and genres of photography we like more than others, and, generally speaking, fashion photography—along with, for instance, insect photography—is one of the genres I don't personally have a feel for; and this shot might intersect more than most fashion photos with the social-documentary mode of photography that I do like. Still, a fine, interesting, and elegant picture, whatever genre you want to assign it to.
Victoria Will is the photographer who took the haunting tintype of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman that I discussed three days ago. (The processing for that photo was done by Josh Wool.) I spent some time at Victoria's website—she's an excellent photographer. Celebrity portraiture is another genre of photography that generally leaves me cold, but I thought her portrait of Brad Pitt was outstanding as well.
TOP will be off tomorrow, as usual, so that I can sit around feeling guilty about not doing housework. We'll return with an "Open Mike" on Sunday morning.
Mike
(Thanks to Jeff Greer)
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Kalli: "This is to fashion photography a bit like what Garry Winogrand's classic football field shot is to sports photography. It's all street to me."
This immediately reminded me of some old renaissance paintings showing a group of dignitaries and experts gathered around an exotic visitor or unusual patient.
Posted by: John Krumm | Friday, 07 February 2014 at 02:55 PM
I just realized that Will's photo is very appropriately canted for the comparison I just made.
Posted by: Kalli | Friday, 07 February 2014 at 03:02 PM
Diverse crowd, huh?
Posted by: Ben Rosengart | Friday, 07 February 2014 at 03:36 PM
Medium Format Professionalism. Victoria has an interview on Hasselbadtv where she talks about her medium format H4D-40..."a richness to it, the color, and a quality that you just can't get from 35mm". She says "35mm cameras cannot do the same thing". She's excellent but is she right or wrong?
http://htv.hasselblad.com/video/portait-photographer-victoria-will
Posted by: JH | Friday, 07 February 2014 at 04:03 PM
Yes, a nicely symbolic image of the event. Victoria's work is quite nice, unmistakably feminine in motifs. I'm sure that she's chosen by her client brands precisely for that characteristic.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Friday, 07 February 2014 at 05:03 PM
that is a great shot and i have a similar general disinterest in fashion photography, but i think i like the third shot in this post even more: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1168684/29#11347795
the presence of anne wintour and bill cunningham certainly helps the image too.
i believe the photographer is vlad dusil.
Posted by: thomas hobbes | Saturday, 08 February 2014 at 05:25 PM
I'm struck, looking at this photograph, that everybody, not just the model, appears to be backlit with a bit of rim lighting to outline edges. It's just beautiful, and a very effective use of what I assume was simply the available light, designed for the audience, not for photography.
Posted by: Bill Tyler | Sunday, 09 February 2014 at 02:16 PM