MARRAKECH EXPRESS

Last night, on returning to previous posts, I realized that my blog is featuring more and more fashion photographers. I’ll get pigeonholed soon enough if I continue presenting these mini studies on the art of fashion photography. But it’s like a good novel, fictional or not, you’re left enthralled and thrilled with the experience. It’s inspiring, conveys separate messages in different registers and becomes a necessity in your life. It can be compared to Elizabeth’s unsuitable weakness for Lady Gaga or Emilie’s addiction to bad boys and porn moustaches, you’re gripped and you can’t distance yourself from the object of your desire…
And this week, it’s a story in the May issue of Italian Vogue that had me transfixed.
It begins with a destination: Morocco. The main narrative evolves around Sasha Pivovarova looking like an incredibly exotic creature. She is extravagantly ravishing and almost culturally alien in her clothes and wigs. The colours, tone and textures used by Steven Meisel create almost painterly lines, working a kind of peaceful magic on me while the male model provides fleeting glimpses of sensuality and sex.
This is exactly what I wanted to see this week: a series of vivid images swaying miraculously into life, an exquisite spectacle of fashion reminiscent of old masters in its traditional approach.
Tomorrow I’m going to see the Guy Bourdin exhibition at the Wapping Project. I hope that I’ll learn something new about his career or at least see pictures that have not yet been unveiled elsewhere.

All pictures courtesy of Steven Meisel, taken from The Fashion Spot
Vogue Italia May 2009