Miles Aldridge, Home Works #3, 2008 © Miles Aldridge
Beyond Fashion
Mar 11 – Jun 4, 2023
IPFO – House of Photography
Olten, Switzerland

Fashion magazines are not made to last. Every month there is a new issue with new images, new dreams to sell. One has to remember that fashion magazines produce hundreds of thousands of images to sell fashion. While flipping through these magazines, one surprising image can suddenly catch the eye. This image goes beyond the magazine whose purpose is to sell a garment and to inform potential customers. Here it is about a photographer’s vision, new aesthetics at play, a narrative that reaches far beyond fashion.

At one time, the only place to see a fashion photograph was in the pages of a magazine or possibly stuck to the wall of a teenage girl’s bedroom; but things have changed, with museums holding major exhibitions, galleries and auction houses selling fashion images, and publishers constantly releasing new titles devoted to fashion photography. Removed from its original context (the magazine page), fashion photography is art’s rising star. The art world is much more accepting of fashion photography because museums have moved from high art to an all-embracing visual culture. For a long time, fashion photography was seen as exclusively commercial. However, contemporary photographers don’t necessarily conceive of their work as fitting into one single category or medium. In the 21st century, boundaries between editorial work, advertising work and personal work are now blurring. Digital media have changed the way photography is reported, consumed and shared. With the explosion of street-style blogs, Instagram and Pinterest, fashion photography has become the new visual language. No longer regarded as frivolous, it has been elevated to the status of an art form.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS
  • Emilio Prini: …E Prini
    Oct 27, 2023 – Mar 31, 2024
    MACRO
    Rome, Italy

    …E Prini is the most extensive exhibition ever dedicated to the work of Emilio Prini (Stresa, 1943–Rome, 2016). Comprising of over 250 works, the exhibition project, realized in collaboration with the Archivio Emilio Prini, is conceived according to a chronological path which spans fifty years, from 1966 to 2016, to reconstruct the work of one of Italy’s most complex and enigmatic artistic figures from the recent past, whose work has not been fully surveyed to this day. (more…)