Writer and academic Shonagh Marshall explores contemporary fashion photography and the new approaches and ideas that have arisen over the past five years. She charts the rise of a new wave of photographers and stylists who have come to the fore in our time of great social, political and economic change, and looks at how fashion image-making – always a product of the time – has responded to these changes more generally.
Marshall looks at this shift by focusing on the work of photographers and stylists including Hanna Moon, Zoë Ghertner, Joyce Ng, Ruth Ossai, Ibrahim Kamara, Lotta Volkova and Charlie Engman, and their identity-based approach in work for magazines such as Dazed, i-D, Vogue, Luncheon, AnOther and System. This masterclass gives participants a unique understanding of how a new generation of image-makers are changing the way fashion exists in pictures and its role in our society.
Shonagh Marshall is an independent curator and writer. She curated the exhibitions Hanna Moon and Joyce Ng: English as a Second Language (2019), Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! (2013), Utopian Voices, Here and Now (2016) and Hair by Sam McKnight (2016) all at Somerset House, and contributes to magazines such as System, The Face, Vogue, AnOther and Foam. In addition to her written and curatorial work, Shonagh teaches master’s fashion photography at the School of Visual Arts and fashion and textiles studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 2018 she wrote and co-curated the book and exhibition Posturing, which defined a new movement in contemporary fashion photography.
Topics covered in class:
A – Books
Holly Hay and Shonagh Marshall – Posturing (SPBH Editions, 2018)
Rebecca Arnold – Fashion Desire and Anxiety: Image and Morality in the Twentieth Century (Rutgers University Press, 2001)
Charlotte Cotton, Imperfect Beauty: The Making of Contemporary Fashion Photographs (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2000)
B – Articles
Hilton Als – Buying the fantasy: The photographer’s who stole the cutting edge (The New Yorker, 1996)
Rebecca Arnold – ‘The Brutalized Body’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, (Body and Culture, Volume 3, Issue 4, 1999)
Marion Hume – When fashion is no excuse at all (The Independent, 1994)
Paul Jobling – If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words, Then What Should We Expect of Fashion Photography? (Journal of Design History, Vol. 14 No. 4, 2001)
Georgina Johnson – What is the future of fashion education? (1 Granary, 2020)
Clementine de Pressigny – Mowalola: The Nigerian designer setting london on fire with her seductive fashion (i-D, Winter 2018)
Amy Spindler – A Death Tarnishes Fashion’s ‘Heroin Look’, (New York Times, 1997)
Alex Wiederin and Olivier Zahm eds. – Irreverent (Rizzoli, 2011)
Lynn Yeager – Once in a lifetime: The village of Huang Luo in China’s Guangxi Region is famous for the dramatically long hair worn by its female residents (Vogue.com, 2019)
C – Exhibitions
Imperfect Beauty: the making of contemporary fashion photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2000
Utopian Voices, Here and Now, Somerset House, 2016
D – Artists Mentioned (in order of appearance)
Nigel Shafran
Guy Bourdin
Irving Penn
Juergen Teller
Tim Walker
Corinne Day
Mario Sorrenti
Joyce Ng
Ibrahim Kamara
Farah Al Qasimi ‘Back and Forth Disco
Peter Lindberg
George Michael ‘Freedom ‘90!’ Music Video Directed by David Finch
David Sims
Nan Goldin
Larry Clark
Steven Meisel
Davide Sorrenti
Inez and Vinoodh
Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott
Steven Klein
Mario Testino
Terry Richardson
Zoe Ghertner
Jamie Hawkesworth
Colin Dodgson
Harley Weir
Tyrone Lebon
Tyler Mitchell
Kristin-Lee Moolman
Paolo Roversi
Pascal Gambarte
Ruth Ossai
Mowalola
Sean and Seng
Brianna Capozzi
Haley Woollens
Emma Wyman
Lotta Volkova
Johnny Dufort
Buck Ellison
Senta Simond
Hanna Moon
Super Yaya
E – Magazines
1 Granary
Luncheon
Dazed
The Face
i-D
Double Magazine
System
Vogue
British Vogue
Vogue Italia
Vogue Paris
Numero
POP
The Gentlewoman