Image is everything nowadays, but this statement is even more true when it refers to fashion. The industry has always thrived on iconic, dreamy, powerful, strong and unusual shoots created by famous photographers and published on glossy magazines.
The Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain, looked in previous exhibitions at the power of images and at their impact on fashion: last year for example the museum analysed during special workshops and exhibitions the influence of José Ortiz Echagüe's photographs of Spanish popular events on Balenciaga and his Haute Couture collections.
A recently launched event - "Distinción: A Century of Fashion Photography" (until 27th January 2019) - looks instead at the images created by influential photographers on the Spanish national scene over the last 100 years.
Produced in collaboration with the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (Barcelona Museum of Design), the event includes rarely seen images from the fashion photography collection of the Catalonian institution.
Through the 107 images taken by 37 photographers in Catalonia and Spain, curators invite visitors to wonder if there are any common features between different photographers, if fashion photography has evolved and why it keeps on fascinating us.
Curator Juan Naranjo interprets the title of the event - "Distinction"- in a dichotomic way, referring to differences and constrasts, but also to elegance and a form of excellence that sets someone or something apart from others.
The event develops in a chronological order and it is divided in seven sections: the origins of fashion photography are presented via the works of Pere Casas Abarca, a Modernista who experimented with photography in the field of advertising.
His images call to mind photographs by Mariano Fortuny: Casas Abarca was indeed influenced by allegorical, mythological and exotic themes and was a representative of Pictorialism, the first ever photographic artistic movement which advocated a style of photography that imitated painting at the turn of the 20th century.
As the years passed, Spain started developing its own visual language, also thanks to magazines D'Ací i D'Allà, Tricornio, Las cuatro estaciones and Imatges and Ford.
The images produced around this period of time and included in the section of the exhibition entitled "New Vision" had two main aims - illustrating articles that presented new trends when it came to Spanish couturiers and advertising their work.
Among this first generation of Spanish fashion photographers that emerged during this period, there was also Ramón Batlles who destabilised in his images the more conventional symmetries, taking his shots from unusual points of view.
The arrival on the fashion scene of the magazine Alta Costura (Barcelona 1943-1969), the first major fashion publication that showcased fashion photography in Spain, introduced new ideals and hopes.
During the long post-war period photographers presented a seductive woman at times inspired by Hollywood stars, portrayed in refined interiors or urban settings.
Dior's New Look triumphed in these images, but Oriol Maspons and Juan Gyenes also took images of models in sculptural gowns by Spanish designers Saint Eulalia and Rosina.
The exhibition section entitled "Movements" is dedicated instead to fans of the dance and fashion connection.
The '60s brought on the scene counter-cultural groups, Pop Art, Mods and hippies, radical debates and social revolutions and photographers started to introduce in their static images a sense of movement with models in dynamic poses and gestures.
One of the many examples in this section is a picture of a model shot by Juana Biarnés twirling in a dress by Miguel Rueda.
Biarnés is an important figure as she worked her way in a man's world and had to confront in her life many prejudices. She was very determined, though, and ended up developing important photojournalism series like the ones focused on pearl fishers in Japan and on the women connected with Pancho Villa in Mexico.
Extravagant fashion narratives and manipulated, simulated and recreated stories prevail instead in "Stagings and Fantasies", a more modern section that combines film and literature with a Surrealist magic (check out Eugenio Recuenco's Tim Walker-inspired "Cinderella" Haute Couture shoot) or futuristic aesthetic, introducing also provocative and erotic fantasies courtesy of Txema Yeste.
Portraits in the past were a sign of status and power, but things changed more recently: new trends and social movements have prompted photographers and fashion to look at identity and differences and celebrate them, breaking all sorts of conventions and boundaries, from class and sex to age and religion.
Images included in the "Identity and Difference" section go from Bèla Adler & Salvador Fresneda's to Enric Galcerán photographs taken in Bali that, featuring models posing among real people in urban environments, act as a sort of link between this part of the exhibition and the very last one - "Landscapes".
The latter takes visitors on a journey through urban or natural landscapes, on a trip through real or fictional architectures, from densely populated areas with skyscrapers in the backgrounds to desolate untamed, wild and barren spaces in which natural elements such as water or rocks prevail.
Though the images are divided in these even themes, it is not difficult to spot here and there some unifying elements and links between different eras, artistic vanguards and currents of thought that prompted social changes in each period and inspired the various photographers (seduction, provocation and glamour are indeed common themes in some of these shoots).
There is a further point of "distinction" between this exhibition and other ones about photography and fashion images: the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum values the importance of images and, to allow all visitors to enjoy this event, it has devised a programme for people with special needs.
Visitors with visual functional diversity will be able to enjoy the exhibition content thanks to a series of services and resources incorporated in the exhibition content - from laminated flyers in relief and braille to audio-descriptions and accessible guided tours. After all, fashion is at its best when it speaks the language of diversity and inclusion and reaches out to all sorts of people.
Image credits for this post
1. and 2.
Pere Casas Abarca (1875-1958)
1902-1903
Silver gelatin on baryta paper,
printed in 1902-1903
3.
Juan Gyenes
1940-1950
4.
Ramón Batlles (1901-1983)
Barcelona, 1934
El Dique Flotante collection
Silver gelatin on baryta paper,
printed in 1934
5.
Oriol Maspons (1928-2013)
Barcelona, 1956
Dress by Saint Eulalia
Silver gelatin on baryta paper,
printed in 2012
6.
Oriol Maspons (1928-2013)
Barcelona, 1966
Pertegaz collection
Silver gelatin on baryta paper,
printed in 2012
7.
Antoni Bernad (1944)
Barcelona,1968
Lambda on baryta paper,
printed in 2012
8.
Juana Biarnés (1935)
Madrid, 1960-1970
Dress by Miguel Rueda
Silver gelatin on baryta paper,
printed in 1960-1970
9.
Eugenio Recuenco (1968)
Cinderella, 2005
Giclée on UltraSmooth Fine Art cotton
paper, printed in 2012
10.
Txema Yeste (1972)
There Somewhere
Delta del Ebro, 2011
Giclée on Photo Rag Baryta paper,
printed in 2012
11.
Bèla Adler & Salvador Fresneda (1959 and 1957)
Barcelona, 2009
Giclée on Photo Rag paper,
printed in 2012
12.
Enric Galceran (1973)
Bali, 2006
Giclée on Fine Art Baryta paper,
printed in 2013
13.
Manuel Outumuro (1949)
Tokyo, 1995
Giclée on Fine Art paper,
printed in 2010
14.
Daniel Riera
City Suits, New York, 2009
15.
Pep Àvila, 2008
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