This summer, the spotlight is on fashion photography at London’s Saatchi Gallery, showing how it has evolved from presenting product lines to reflecting everyday life and becoming an art form in its own right.
In this edition of CULT, Damon Embling visits the Saatchi Gallery’s latest exhibition, Beyond Fashion.
The summer exhibition features the works of nearly 50 photographers from around the world. From the 80s to the present day, the images go beyond iconic photos of designers and supermodels.
Saatchi Gallery’s Lily Waterton explains to Damon how fashion photography has evolved and explores a range of notions of beauty, and how the exhibition includes works that look through various lenses.
Beauty, identity and gender are some of the themes addressed in one of the exhibition’s main installations, “Under Your Smell.” This series of enormous fabric prints created by photography students in Switzerland offer an immersive, visual interpretation of Jean Paul Gaultier’s perfumes.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Paris-based photographer Jonathan de Villiers, displaying two French Vogue images, explains to Damon how he creates work that shakes up industry norms.
Its exhibitions show luxurious diamond jewelry in domestic and “chaotic” scenes.
The Beyond Fashion exhibition presents everything from established names to the new generation of image makers, documenting how fashion photography has become an exciting new visual language.
The exhibition will remain at the Saatchi Gallery in London until September 8, 2024.
