Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Design Evolution of The Generic and
The Design Evolution of The Generic and
DESIGN EVOLUTION OF THE GENERIC AND
ADAPTABLE BODY IN STEVEN MEISEL’S AND STEVEN
KLEIN’S FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY
Caterina FRANCISCA & Sandra NUUT
Introduction
How does criticism appear in fashion magazines? We believe that fashion
photography is the only medium of criticism in fashion magazines, and therefore
base our analysis on the former understanding. The work of Steven Meisel and
Steven Klein shows the transformation of the body into appearance. It is crucial to
analyze the oeuvre of these photographers since fashion magazines do not convey
any other form of criticism; fashion photography in fashion journalism are produced
first and foremost to sell products. They are important media of communication, and
we experience these visuals because they are related to human appearance.
Contemporary technology and innovation in medical and computer sciences have
made us think that the body is a subject that can be changed, transformed, controlled,
reconstructed and designed1. Fashion photography is creating the modern canon of
body appearance, which society desires and tries to fit itself into. It is an ideal that
only a tall slender model dressed in haute couture (additionally enhanced with
Photoshop) can attain. Bodies in the pictures as well as the images themselves are
absolute commodities; they are social products which have discarded the illusion of
being‐for‐society.2 The economic value of the fashion photography is proportional to
how valuable the appearance of the body is. The representation of the concept of the
body central to this paper is visible in a number of fashion magazines. We are looking
at Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris and Vogue US, since these feature works by Steven Meisel
and Steven Klein which represent new shifting ideas of the body throughout the
2000s. We also consider the work of fashion photographer Helmut Newton,
1
forefather of Meisel and Klein, whose landmark work first appeared in Vogue in
1972.3
We consume and digest these image bibles. They reflect, inspire and question the
image values through visual representation. The format of today’s fashion magazines
recalls the size of a bible ‐ thick, heavy and full of iconic representations. Ours is not a
time of the written word but of images, both still and moving contributing to an
image overload. Fashion imagery, through fashion photography, has never been more
visible. Vogue is the most prominent and influential magazine since it is read or at
least acknowledged by both fashion insiders as well as people who are not in the
business of fashion.4 American Vogue and its international counterparts represent a
mood, a taste, and a certain cultural moment specific to their location, background,
and fashion community. However, they all create fantasies and ideas that do not
appear to be specific to any location or identity. The fashion world is universal,
multicultural, constantly looking for the new, a process looking for progress. Steven
Meisel, an American fashion photographer, has worked for Italian Vogue since 1988.
Meisel says that in terms of the Vogues he has worked for, Vogue Italia has been his
most creative outlet and allows him to do more or less what he feels like doing.5
Fashion photography has and creates its own reality but also reflects what is most
current. It borrows from the surroundings, from the arts, politics and the economy.
The Body Is A Mannequin
The body plays a crucial, central role in fashion as the hanger, the mannequin that
acts as a skeleton to showcase designs and garments. There is no discussion about
fashion without the body. The body represents the current envisioning of how
clothes should fit and hang. The image of the body is the attempt to define a symbolic
beauty. People and their bodies rarely look the same, however. The fashion image
engineered by fashion photographers represents a cold inhuman standardized, even
streamlined idea of the body.
3 Helmut Newton, Voguepedia, accessed October 28, 2013.
http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Helmut_Newton.
4
Caroline Weber, “Fashion,” The New York Times, December 3, 2006, accessed October 31, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/books/Weber2.t.html?_r=0.
5 Pierre Alexandre De Looz, Who Is Steven Meisel? 032c, December 1, 2008, accessed October 28, 2013,
http://032c.com/2008/who‐is‐steven‐meisel.
2
Since the onset of the 21st Century, visual images create and carry the content that
has become more and more an evident subject – the human body. The garments are
not in focus, or perhaps they are in the shadow of the new material – the flesh.
Photography, plastic surgery, fashion are in desperate search of a new universal
perfection. It is a dance of provocations and attraction: the person becomes the
object of design. The skin turns into a smooth plastic surface that has no
imperfections. There is an absence of feeling and sensoriality. The body becomes but
a surface manipulated like an object that therefore appears genderless.
Reference to the Greek Ideal of Beauty
Ancient Greek society was immersed in finding and establishing the prototype for the
perfect body that expressed harmony, balance, order, and an objective idea of beauty
that resulted in the Greek theory of classical proportions, architecture and sculpture.
[Greek artists] began to form certain general ideas of the beauty of individual parts of
the body as well as of the whole—ideas which were to rise above nature itself; their
model was an ideal nature originating in the mind alone.6
The contemporary fashion photographer captures and depicts a composed and
better reality.
The imitation of beauty in nature either directs itself toward a single object or it
gathers observations of various individual objects and makes of them a whole. The first
method means making a similar copy . . . the second, however, is the way to general
beauty and to ideal images of it.7
For the millennium, Emanuel Ungaro’s campaign by fashion photographer Mario
Sorrenti creates a setting that combines a female model with a white marble
sculpture of a male. The vibrant body of the model is interacting in a sexual manner
with a cold inanimate body. The contact shows a need to become part of the
perfection. The body of the model is made to look similar to the body of the statue.
The hair has gel applied to it in order to become stationary; the skin color reflects
6 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, trans.
Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton (Chicago: Open Court, 1987), 15.
7 Ibid, 21.
3
light, simulating the milky whiteness of the sculptural figure. As for fashion, the dress
has a secondary purpose. It is the beginning of ‘body research’ in visual
representation in the early 2000s.
Emanuel Ungaro, Mario Sorrenti, 2000.
The body does not impose any technological or mechanical aspects. This is a
momentary hiatus, an approach before the next, technological, more plastic stage.
On the same theme, in “Uniform Charme” (Vogue Italia, November 2005) Steven
Klein captures a model in a uniform in a deserted landscape with sculptures, where
one of the figures is in a cage. Both the uniform and the caged sculpture signify the
need for order and discipline.
4
“Uniform Charme,” Vogue Italia, November 2005, Steven Klein.
The next stage is confronting the body. This is seen in both Sisley’s 2008
spring/summer campaign by Camilla Akrans and in the editorial, “Le Nouveau Paris
de Ralph Lauren” (Vogue Paris, September 2008) by Cédric Buchet. The model lies in
front of and on the sculpture, trying to become part of the composition as well as
trying to emulate the pose of the sculpture.
5
Sisley, spring/summer 2008, Camilla Akrans.
“Le Nouveau Paris de Ralph Lauren,” Vogue Paris, September 2008, Cédric Buchet.
The Dolce & Gabbana fall/winter 2006/2007 campaigns by Steven Meisel depict a
series of group photographs where models have become sculptures. There are
decorative sculptures in the background, but they have no major relevance to the
image. The Greek culture looked at classical sculpture as an ideal to achieve.
6
“The human form is employed in the classical type of art not as mere sensuous
existence, but exclusively as the existence and physical form corresponding to mind
(…).”8
The images described are objectifying the body beyond the ideal, turning it into
unachievable body. The images feature a collection of high fashion garments; they are
selling us an idea of a certain status, wealth, behavior and environment, which the
perfect body is part of.
Dolce & Gabbana, fall/winter 2006/2007, Steven Meisel.
8 G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory lectures on aesthetics (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 85.
7
The New Material
If previously the body was molded against classical sculpture, in the next phase, it is
facing raw flesh. In the “The Big Chill” article (Vogue US, 2004) photography by
Steven Klein, animal flesh is hanging in a meat locker next to a shivering half naked
model. The body is situated in a slaughterhouse that represents work, division and
process. This can happen with the fragile human body in the near future: it can be
streamlined, cut into pieces and modified. The article starts with the words: “Save
your skin (…)”, meaning that the fashion business is selling the idea that it is possible
to save the appearance of the human body, stop it from becoming perishable, and
maintain a certain fixed image.
“The Big Chill,” Vogue US, 2004, Steven Klein.
8
The clinical and emotionless images in “Head Games” and “Extraordinary Machines”
by Steven Klein (Vogue US, 2005, 2006) further develop the idea of the industrial‐
made body. The process of making ‘the body beautiful’ is not only a human system
but also involves technology. It entails a system that is robotic, flawless, standardized
and mechanized. The spa becomes a sterile clinic. Machines manufacture the beauty
making it conform to a universal model not connected with individuality. Beauty
becomes affordable; it is “the new techno‐obsessed world of twenty‐first‐century
beauty.”9
“Extraordinary Machines,” Vogue US 2006, Steven Klein.
The Digital Body
In the 21st Century, the digital obsession of retouching photography becomes more
and more prominent. One of the most vivid examples is the cover of Vogue Italia
(November 2007) showing a picture of a photo. The cover is on a computer screen
where an aspiring hand tries to reach it. The beauty has become unapproachable and
impossible to attain – perfection is embodied only as a distant image.
9 Ying Chu, “Extraordinary Machines,” Vogue US, January 1, 2006, 148.
9
Vogue Italia, November 2007.
Photo enhancement is synonymous with natural beauty. Images of models have
therefore become homogeneous and homogenized. In the March 2008 issue of Vogue
US, the artistic retoucher Pascal Dangin changed 144 images: 107 advertisements, 36
fashion pictures and the cover.10 Thus, as media consumers, we digest images of
flawless bodies that are the result of diets, surgeries and photo manipulation. Hyper‐
perfected women’s bodies convey a sense that we require a redesign. As the fashion
industry presents a new collection each season, the body shape is updated according
to seasonal trends. Clothes were once designed around the human form and for
human needs. Today the body is reproduced as part of the fashion industry. The flesh
is the new material to experiment and work with, and fashion photographers were
the first to introduce this idea. Thus the body has become unstable and malleable. It
follows the production flow, becoming globalized and designed. The body has
become such a personal project that people are starting to struggle with the
understanding of “the material source of their existence.”11 Contemporary society is
looking for the globalized body, one that everyone aspires to. It is a hybrid form,
which lacks in personality and differences. Today’s body “has become a feature of
postmodernism thought to celebrate multiplicity, to elevate fluidity over knowing
and complexity over simplicity, and to see embodiment, like femininity and
masculinity, as something we achieve through performing or enacting the body we
want to have.”12 We lack body coherence; the body is mass produced and
mechanically inspired. It is fragmented and recognizable. The images play around the
ideas of dismemberment and the need to experience the body as a unity is made
10
Lauren Collins, “Pixel Perfect,” The New Yorker, May 18, 2008, accessed October 31, 2013,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins.
11
Susie Orbach, Bodies (New York: Picador, 2009), 32.
12
Ibid, 90 – 91.
10
debatable. The parts are replaced and modified in order to change our proportions
and structures. We recognize and accept this new idea of fragmented “natural”
beauty.
The visual culture is casting the relationship between our body and the world that we
live in. The glossy images are the reflection of the ideology of what we should all look
like – “if you don’t look like it, you are out.”
The Subject Body
The human body has been substantially modified over the centuries. Some of the first
traces of body modification practices visible today come from Renaissance
illustrations and artistic paintings of anatomical studies. The fashion industry and
magazines use photography to display and sell ideas, trends and garments. With the
birth of the media channels, images have become easily widespread and globally
consumed. Today, we can observe the same fashion campaign in China, the United
States of America and France. The globalized image has created what we call the
“global grammar of beauty.”
In Renaissance “anatomical lesson” paintings, the body is center stage, smack in the
middle of male spectators who are observing the surgery. Soon after, this practice
and the manipulation of the body silhouette became a taboo, when ethical theories
argued against the values and morals of the practice. Henceforth, body modifications
were hidden underneath clothes and makeup.
It is well‐known that fashion has always used bodies to communicate cultural, social,
and political ideas. However, fashion photography has rarely taken kindly to the idea
of flesh. “Flesh suggests messiness, privileging the indiscipline of life over the fierce
control of art, the aerobicized body spilling over the contours of an artificial
silhouette.”13
Helmut Newton’s late‐seventies series of “Naked Women in Orthopedic Body Braces”
shows prosthetic devices closely interacting with models’ limbs. The artificial
material pushes and reshapes the constrained human skin. The machine and the raw
13
Daphne Merkin, “The F Word,” The New York Times, August 11, 2010, accessed October 31, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/t‐magazine/22face‐merkin‐t.html.
11
technology (the prosthetic object) are next to the naked body. “Women corseted,
masked, bound and teetering on high heels. Bodies measured, bandaged, prodded,
and poked. These fantasies and illusions propose new hybrids of beauty for an age in
which the pursuit of beauty has become an extreme sport,” writes Eva Raspini in
“Extreme Beauty in Vogue.” Helmut Newton’s models were melted into the
surroundings, posing in high‐society rooms, aristocratic landscapes, or modern
apartments. The social context is represented as a consistent part of the subject. His
photography emulates the hi‐tech movement in architecture – the braces around the
model’s legs are like the outside facades of the Centre Pompidou in Paris ‐
questioning the idea of manipulated and technologically manufactured human
surfaces.
“Naked Women in Orthopedic Body Braces,” Helmut Newton.
The mechanical, robotic themes in Newton’s work continue in the “Machine Age”
(Vogue US, 1995). If the corset was the old kind of prosthesis, the new one is the
robot‐like glistening armor that both constrains and enhances the body. The
photographs establish a retro‐futuristic image combining the old and the new of
robot aesthetics. But most of all, it is about tweaking a body, securing it from
becoming something other than perfection. The body has to have heels – the body
has to be enhanced in its performance as well as being aesthetically pleasing. The
12
robotic woman’s skin glows through the transparent plastic parts ensuring she is
human.
The previously mentioned images were describing a before and after effect; now they
are showing the “in between” process. The perfect body has to be in a state of
constant movement, and advancement. One of the pictures from the “Machine Age”
series displays female bodies that communicate a linear narrative ‐ the past, present
and future, or before, after and in progress.
“Machine Age,” Vogue US, 1995, Helmut Newton.
A woman lying on a chaise longue is in the middle of a circle of suited men wearing
futuristic glasses, wires and remotes. The men are controlling the woman’s body.
What is controlled is not visible but the act of pointing turns the body into an object.
The men are not only the spectators of a process, but also interacting with the
objectified subject. Newton repeats the Renaissance spectacle both here and in “Men
measuring a woman, Monte‐Carlo” (1996). However, the setting is a tailoring room,
where there are no garments in focus. Rather there is a naked woman wearing heels
(again) standing upright on the table while men are measuring her. The men do not
look at the body as a woman’s body; the flesh is like a garment that is moldable,
fixable, and improvable.
13
“Machine Age,” Vogue US, 1995, Helmut Newton.
“Men measuring a woman, Monte‐Carlo,” 1996, Helmut Newton.
The Vogue Paris Scandaleuse Beauté (December 2005/January 2006 edition)
featuring Kate Moss on the cover presents the model as the embodiment of perfect
beauty. An article in the same issue features Moss’ face, measured and theorized. The
idea proposes that it is possible to find proportions that can be right and therefore
perfect. In the article “Chasing Perfect” (Vogue US, 2009) by Teri Agins it is not just
the image that develops but also the language. For example, the article highlights the
phrase ‘high‐def skin’ that borrows its wording from digital photography. The skin is
14
not made of cells and the face does not include pores; the body is an ensemble of
defined pixels.
Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery
Cosmetic surgery is a compelling fashion topic of the late 20th and early 21st century.
Vogue Paris (December 2002/January 2003) has a special booklet on beauty, Beauté:
toute neuve. Here skin is represented in the form of a vegetable or fruit. Cosmetic
surgery is transformed into a sort of fairy tale magical metamorphosis. We are able to
see the process but there is no sense or sight of pain; there is no messiness of the
work process.
“Beauté: toute neuve,” Vogue Paris, December 2002/January 2003.
15
In “Scratching the Surface” (Vogue US, January 2002) Steven Klein photographs a
naked body covered with liquid, which makes the skin look flawless. The
disappearance of everything except the body is taken further with the invisible face
that wears masks in both “Home Work” (Vogue US, December 2007) and “Fast
Forward” (Vogue US, August 2012). In “Home Work” the mask is wired; it seems to
be doing something to the unidentifiable face as the model is cutting the chicken with
her glossy, smooth hands. In “Fast Forward” the face is erased. The ideal is pushed to
the limit, showing that faces can be worn like accessories.
“Home Work,” Vogue US, December 2007, Steven Klein.
“Fast Forward,” Vogue US, August 2012, Steven Klein.
16
In “Silicone Valleys” (Vogue US, April 2007) Steven Klein pictures a model with
oversized breasts under a car as a mechanic in high fashion garments. The car is
there to highlight the exaggeration. The same effect is visible in “Risky Business”
(Vogue US, May 2008) where the model flaunts grotesque super‐sized lips in a
hospital environment. The model’s lips are so big that she appears to be a victim of a
of disability. Plastic surgery becomes restriction and absurdity.
“Silicone Valleys,” Vogue US, April 2007, Steven Klein.
“Risky Business,” Vogue US, May 2008, Steven Klein.
17
In the last decades, plastic surgery has become widely popular and is no longer a
taboo. The series “Makeover Madness” by Steven Meisel (Vogue Italia, July 2005)
shows moments of body transformation in the hospital and on the plastic surgeon’s
table. It is a long image story, a whole narrative around plastic surgery – combining
luxurious hotel rooms and hospital‐like spaces with ‘before and after’ inserts. The
operation is a performance, but now the spectators are not Anatomy Lesson students,
but real clients.
“Cosmetic Surgery belongs to the cultural landscape of late modernity; consumer
capitalism, technological development, liberal individualism, and the belief in the
malleability of the human body.” 14
14
Kathy Davis, Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery (New York: Routledge, 1995),
28–29.
18
“Makeover Madness,” Vogue Italia, July 2005, Steven Meisel.
In Steven Meisel’s photo shoot Linda Evangelista’s is the subject displayed in all
possible evolutions of plastic surgery and rehabilitation. There is bloating, blood and
pain. There is no specific identity available – the faces are wrapped in bandages,
making the models look all the same to foreshadow the aftermath that is
standardized beauty. Surgery becomes fashionable and part of the fashion discourse.
Surgeons are fashion designers who cut, sew and stuff organic living material, the
human body. The fashion spread ends with a picture set on the street, where a
woman in a black outfit and bandages is in between objects of design ‐ black glossy
cars that reflect the same ideas of luxurious, beautiful and perfect design.
19
“Makeover Madness,” Vogue Italia, July 2005, Steven Meisel.
These almost perverse, nonetheless popular body modification procedures can be
linked back to Michel Foucault’s theory of "disciplining the body and of regulating
populations." Foucault was referring to the 1880s and 1890s surgical practice of
making ears, noses, and breasts all homogeneous.15 In 2006, Steven Klein brings back
Foucault’s idea in “Intelligent Design ‐ Remote Control” (Vogue US, January 2006). In
Klein’s pictures, machines are working on the model’s body replacing human
surgeons. Modern medicine is considered a machine able to refine human bodies.16 In
contrast to Newton’s previously described work, the machine here is technologically
advanced and controlled.
15
Gilman Sander L, Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Plastic Surgery, (Princeton : Princeton
University Press, 1999), 16.
16
Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 220.
20
“Intelligent Design ‐ Remote Control,” Vogue US, January 2006, Steven Klein.
Diesel’s 2008 advertisement “Live Fast” features a surgeon running after and
stitching a model’s leg. At the same time the model/designer is running and
designing a garment on a mannequin. It illustrates that skin as well as fabric is cut.
“Live Fast,” Diesel 2008.
The human skin in Steven Meisel’s “Multifaceted Women” (Vogue Italia, September
2012) is again represented as an object, plasticized and deprived of unique human
characteristics. “This contemporary body provides a surface for the play of invisible
21
yearnings and visible emotions.”17 Meisel’s pictures highlight and blur the boarders
between artificial and natural, confusing the two and playing with context and
positions. Meisel’s woman can choose to wear different silicon faces. Her skin is
covered with latex. She touches herself and animals stressing the contrasting
contacts. A second layer covers the skin surface substituting the prosthetic objects,
which were pictured before by Newton. This photo spread shows a critical turn ‐ it
questions the plastic surgery that has become a cheap monster‐making business.
Plastic surgery has created an overload of masks. The images show a drag queen who
has no skin – faces are covered with masks, hands with gloves and bodies with high
fashion. The settings have become old, odd and kitschy reflecting the current image
of plastic surgery.
“Multifaceted Women”, Vogue Italia, September 2012, Steven Meisel.
17
Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imagining the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine,
(Cambridge: MIT Press. 1993), 16.
22
In “Space Odyssey” (Vogue US, September 2012) the body disappears, portending
that the body will not be relevant in the future. If before the face was masked, then
now it is covered with enhancing accessories. The body has become a machine for
some unknown purpose. It is a soldier‐like fictional figure. The machine that the
redesigned body has become is more perfect than the human body.
“Space Odyssey,” Vogue US, September 2012, Steven Klein.
At the same time there is a parallel of the grown‐up designed body. In June 2012 an
article entitled “Destiny’s Child” discusses how to construct (design?) a perfect baby.
Modern medicine is able to detect physical as well as genetic defects, arguing that
there is the possibility to alter the design of future babies before they are conceived.
Klein’s photo of a model behind the screen looking over rows of babies does not
23
portray a loving mother. She is instead a determined shopper who is selecting the
baby that fits the idealistic standards.
“Destiny’s Child,” Vogue US, 2012, Steven Klein.
At the time this paper was written the latest Vogue Italia (June 2013) features
another fashion spread by Steven Meisel that, on one hand, relates to the “Makeover
Madness” spread and, on the other hand, takes a new, very current approach to the
body. It still reinforces the notion that the body has to be in the center of luxurious
settings and wearing high fashion to achieve the ideal. But, at the same time, we are
not dealing with cosmetic surgery. There are no cuts, openings, insertions required to
perfect the body. It is a more sensitive process. The supermodel Gisele Bündchen’s
flawless body is treated in a spa. She gets the most recent array of treatments
available, for example the blood facial mask.
Pairing the picture of a body under treatment with an actual fashion image (featuring
high fashion) makes it very clear that the body has to have a certain look and shape,
and to achieve that goal it has to go through a rigorous maintenance process.
24
“Luxury,” Vogue Italia, June 2013, Steven Meisel.
25
Conclusion
The contemporary body images by fashion photographers produce a new type of sex
that lacks gender. On the cover of Vogue Italia (March 2013) by Meisel there are two
zoomed‐in faces. In these pictures the sex has no importance. The facial features have
become similar to the point that they can be confused with each other: they mirror
and converge. It is the all‐pleasing figure. The body is uniformly covered in a layer of
clothing, erasing gender signifiers. It is lean, thin and interchangeable, a confused
childlike image that has become an objectified commodity. This ideal produces a
generic and adaptable body.
“Moda,” Vogue Italia, March 2013, Steven Meisel.
Body image is a concept that has been shaped by various forces: globalized society,
the fashion industry, the body culture (fitness), medicine (cosmetic surgery,
prosthetics), advancements in technology, in design (new materials, 3D printing),
and the speed of digital media. The cohesive representation in fashion imagery of the
26
human body has narrowed and compressed it into an aspirational ideal. It is a sum of
ideas shaped into a controlled body that is efficient in fitting into the fashion image.
As long as the body is compatible with society’s conditions (fashion), it remains
profitable. This can be chased by performing assigned movements and certain
postures representing contemporary fashion and beauty ideals.18
It is true that “the body is “no longer a place we live from” but rather a place where
the capitalist marketplace has hit a sort of pay dirt. From trendy diets to vaginal
recalibration to liposuction, the body is big business.”19 The act of being exposed to
flesh manipulation is thus standardized by constant technological evolution.
Consumption is central to modern life. After living in New York City we can see that it
is possible to make anything a part of the marketplace; everything can become more
consumable. There are no limits. The highly designed society of consumers has
adapted intellectual and cultural needs into material needs.20 Consumerism extends
to our bodies. We believe that the image has an impact that has created a necessity
after perpetual transformations and changes. The body has to be in process, and
more developed, like everything desirable around us.
18
Ibid, 152, 154.
19
Susie Orbach, Bodies, (New York: Picador, 2009), 165.
20
Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, (London: Routledge, 1991), 79.
27