JD Institute of Fashion Technology, India’s leading fashion institute, invites brilliant, artistic, and creative young minds to our diploma programs. We offer them opportunities to broaden their horizons, expand their perspectives and fulfill their dreams in this career. 

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them” – David Hume

The aforementioned statement is, however, not confined just to human beings.

How many of you are fond of reading Elle, Cosmopolitan, or Vogue? Probably most of us like reading or at least flipping over the pages of such fashion magazines. One would conjecture that these magazines are for the aesthete and not for a common reader. But pause and think, even though you are not actually into fashion you still won’t hesitate to flip around the pages of any of the magazines of the aforementioned genre. And at the same time, most of us would secretly agree to the fact that fancy photographs are probably the most striking feature of these magazines. But whose brain is behind such magnificent photographs? You guessed it right, it’s the fashion photographer’s mind that just traps us into this luxurious world like an evil circle.

The field of photography is extremely diverse, with a plethora of categories and subcategories present in it. Any common person thinks that it is just limited to clicking photos. But it ain’t that way. It takes skill and hard work in order to transform oneself from a tyro to a virtuoso in the field of photography.

So, fashion photography is a genre of photography revolving around the display of clothes and other fashion items. It is usually conducted for advertisements. And also for fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle, or Vanity Fair. Most of us think that it’s just a fad attributed to the 21st century, but it dates back to the earliest days of photography. There have been many pioneers in this field who have made remarkable advancements in the field of fashion photography. 

Some of the game changers in the aforementioned field have been mentioned below:

• Edward Steichen

           Considered as one of the pioneers of modern fashion photography,  he is known as one of the most prominent contributors in the history of 20th-century photography. The design of the 1920as and 30s was dominated primarily by the delicacy of the garments and the ease of movements. And certainly, both these things were captured vividly in his photographs.

• Norman Parkinson

                This fashion photography virtuoso liked to describe himself as “The most unknown of famous fashion photographers”. He certainly brought a fashion photography revolution in the 1950s and 70s by bringing it outwards in contrast to the studio shoots of contemporary photographers back then. This esthete certainly injected a casual elegance into art. He had been the photographer of choice for celebs, the President, and the Prime minister as well!

• Cecil Beaton

                Sir Cecil Beaton’s fascination with glamour prevailed throughout his life which made him court photographer to the British Royal Family back in 1937. According to Cecil, one must be daring, different, impractical, and not play it safe be slaves of the ordinary.

• Horst P Horst

      German fashion photographers experimented with Surrealism in the 1930s. He photographed the surreal dress designs of his friend Schiaparelli. His most epochal work is Mainbocher Corset, taken back in 1937 at Vogue studio in Paris on the eve of World War II.

• Irving Penn

           By making use of white paper backdrops and striking composition to lay emphasis on form, he introduced a concise style to fashion photography, the departure from the aureate setting which used to define the genre previously.

• George Hoyningen Huene

       It was he who introduced the look and style of the 1930s and beyond, inspired by Parisian haute couture fashion houses such as Chanel and Balenciaga.

Conclusion

Fashion photography or even Fashion technology, just like any genre is a tedious job. Since it involves marketing too, attention to detail becomes all the way more important. Aspiring photographers who wish to become fashion photographers have a new avenue to pursue. Many institutes like JD Institute of Fashion Technology offer courses on fashion technology in order to understand this field better.

From our perspective, this skill is innate or you can say, inbuilt in an individual. Of course, one can master these skills with practice and experience in order to perform this task adroitly.

We would like to conclude by saying:

“Don’t change to fit the fashion, change the fashion to fit you”