We live in a visual world in which we are constantly bombarded by images and, if you are a passionate fashion fan, you probably also get additional daily doses of assorted pictures at times automatically sent on your mobile phone through subscriptions to sites, newsletters and magazines.
But, surely, not all these images are worthy of being remembered or stored: while nowadays it isn't so difficult to produce technically impeccable pictures, not many of them are really iconic, unforgettable or should be studied and analysed from a historical or anthropological point of view.
Yet fashion history as produced pictures that prove to be particularly interesting and intriguing not just for the designs showed or their set and settings, but for the meaning hidden behind them. Take for example the photographs produced around 1989 in Georgia by Brian Griffin. The British photographer went there to shoot a story with Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons's Six magazine.
A recent exhibition, organized in collaboration with the up-and-coming gallery Project ArtBeat, at Tbilisi's Museum of Modern Art (launched to coincide with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi) rediscovered the shoot.
Twenty-seven years may have gone, but the 12 photos still look mesmerizingly beautiful with just a surrealistic twist about them: the shoot was styled by Kawakubo and photographed by Griffin, but no professional models were used. The locals were indeed the protagonists of the pictures.
There is a story behind the images: Kawakubo went to Georgia after she met film producer and director Sandro Vakhtangov while he was visiting Japan. Both loved Georgian self-taught primitivist painter Niko "Nikala" Pirosmani, the main inspiration for the photographs.
Vakhtangov helped organizing the trip for Kawakubo and Griffin near the town of Telavi in the Kakheti region, and went as far as scouting some of the locals (including his aunt) who participated in the shoot.
In the pictures the locals wear their own clothes mixed with Comme des Garçons's designs and they stand amid rural landscapes or they are pictured with ordinary objects such as wheelbarrows and a barrel organ. Griffin recounts there were animal sacrifices in a nearby church, and they also photographed the priest at the end of the rites.
The most interesting thing about the juxtaposition of fashion designs and traditional clothes - such as the chokha, a jacket with bandoliers on both sides of the chest, usually filled with bullet-like decorations called Masri - is that the former reference the latter in a very interesting way, while some of Comme des Garçons's pieces also call to mind the clothes in Pirosmani's paintings.
The images tell a story of hardships and challenges through the faces of the people portrayed, but they also hint at the politically complex times the country was going through then since it was obtaining its independence from the Soviet Union (Georgia became independent in 1991 and, a few months later, the Soviet Union collapsed).
One image of the statue of Mother Georgia surrounded by red tulips was dedicated by Griffin to the Georgian peaceful protesters killed in a conflict with Soviet soldiers in Tbilisi in April 1989.
These images somehow anticipate the rise of Georgia on the fashion scene (think about Vêtements by Georgian-born Demna Gvasalia, current Creative Director at Balenciaga), but their rediscovery may lead to further projects. Griffin is indeed currently interested in developing a book combining images of contemporary pieces by Georgian designers with traditional clothes.
Griffin also shot some VHS videos while he was in Georgia with Kawakubo and he posted them on YouTube, so check them out to discover more about the backstage to this story.
Hopefully the videos and the images will be featured also in the Costume Institute's Spring 2017 exhibition at the Met Museum that will celebrate next year Rei Kawakubo and the Art of the In-Between (May 4 - September 4, 2017).
The exhibition will examine Kawakubo's fascination with interstitiality or the space between boundaries and dualities such as East/West, male/female, and past/present and so on. This photoshoot perfectly goes with these themes since it tackles the juxtaposition between fashion and traditions. Love Griffin's images? You can buy them on the Project ArtBeat site.
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