Let's continue the photography thread that started yesterday with a brief post on a conceptual dress recently designed by Antoine Peters. The fashion designer recently created a garment called the "No Picture Please" Dress characterised by a print of crossed out cameras.
The dress (with a matching bag and scarf) was inspired by Andy Warhol's proverbial 15 minutes of fame that turned into an obsessive reality in our times through Big Brother, Facebook, security cameras, drones, Google glass and the impression of being constantly spied upon not just by hackers, but by governments as well.
Made possible by the Incentive Creative Industries and Print Unlimited, the dress was donned by actress Victoria Koblenko during Amsterdam Fashion Week causing confusion and a key question – was it allowed to photograph her or was it not?
Peters created the design as a challenge launched by the MOTI Museum of The Image in Breda to react to Isotype, a system of clear symbols developed by the German-Dutch designer Gerd Arntz (1900-1988).
Born in a German family of traders and manufacturers, Arntz was connected to the Cologne based "progressive artists group" (Gruppe progressiver Künstler Köln) and depicted the life of workers and the class struggle in abstracted figures on woodcuts.
Noticed by social scientist and philosopher Otto Neurath who developed a method to communicate via simple images complex information on society, economy and politics, Arntz created for Neurath a series of signs, small illustrations and pictograms (around 4,000) for his "Vienna method of visual statistics" that became known as "Isotype" (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education) and that was meant to be a sort of dictionary to summarise and support the verbal content of the statistics.
Arntz’ designs were very progressive for the time and they still look very modern, forming the basis of contemporary visual communication dominated by icons, program buttons and infographics.
The way Arntz infographics bring information in a simple way, without language, nationality or education barriers, is the main reason why Peters was fascinated by them together with the possibility of exploring our current interest in photographing, tagging and sharing everything surrounding us.
"At first I was thinking about un-photogenic material, but what is more powerful than an appeal to decency. If someone still photographs or tags you everyone sees that it was an unwanted action," Peters stated in a press release. "I noticed that the way people react to the dress says a lot about our time and its values. This dress is like a peacock in defense mode. What does it mean that we push the shutter button anyway?"
The '"o Picture Please" Dress is part of MOTI HOTEL, an exhibition featuring 20 international designers, at MOTI Museum Of The Image in Breda, The Netherlands, until 1st June 2014.
Image credits
Images of the "No Picture Please" Dress in this post by Eline Baggen.
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