Van Dyke Lewis
HUMEC
Cornell University
Abstract
In asking the question, is black culture ready for fashion photography, the malfunction of the post –soul fashion image and its border distinction inadvertently demonstrates the fragility and precarious nature of the black image whilst highlighting its suitability for the creation of fashion.
As discourse, fashion lies in-between the cross hairs of neo-Marxian “distinction” theory and a quest to define oneself as both a charismatic aesthete and a survivor of crisis.
The complex dialectic between fashion expression and the visual articulation and determination of self leads this investigation. Using examples from fashion magazines, information is made accessible through the graphic devices of type, text, words, layout, and photographs. However the fashion photograph is found to depict subjects as ideals, evacuated from the complexity of real life, nevertheless f ashion photographs are upheld as the preeminent component of postmodern fashion communication. The discussion looks at the usefulness of the fashion photograph and the way it links personal departures between the idea of fashion and the actuality of fashion. The photograph is found to occupy two spaces; as commodity and as a commodifier of objects, environments, and people. Ultimately, the fashion photograph portrays black subjects as a plasticization of a dignified black image. I argue that fashion photography is somewhat treacherous because they presents easy misreadings of the cultural work that Diaspora blacks have nurtured since their “liberation.”