Donyale Luna By Paco Rabanne: The Evolution Of Fashion Photography

What is fashion photography? In general terms, it is a photograph that is done to specifically display or depict clothing and/or accessories as visual advertising. The majority of the times the purposes of photographs are to document or sell the prevailing style or custom of dress of the time. What the term fashion photography stands for has changed and evolved over time, and there are key photographers who have influenced this change. Even though the main component of a fashion photograph is to emanate a fashion or fashionable lifestyle, the techniques and approaches used have changed and are much more complex. Magazine publications such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue have done a superb job of staying on trend and relevant by consistently
Which is seen in his image Donyale Luna in Dress by Paco Rabanne (Figure 5). This particular work was a gelatin silver print and was made in January of 1966 and was featured in Vogue. The way that the female form and dress was executed in this photograph shows the sexual and social changes of this decade (Rosenblum 502). Richard Avedon was a prominent fashion photographer beginning in the 1950’s, and his early work was shot outdoors using natural light. Later in his career, he experimented with models running in front of white backgrounds, this was to become his signature style. An image that showcases this well would be the image taken of Marilyn Monroe; it shows how he was able to capture the personality of his subjects (Figure 6). Even though Monroe was a sex symbol of the 1950’s, you see a different side of her, a more vulnerable side. Many Ray was a photographer as well as a painter, and was very influential as well. He did a piece for Harper’s Bazaar in 1936 that used the arrangement of a beach robe shot against a backdrop of his own painting, called Observatory Time-The Lovers (Figure 7). It captured a combination of luxury and some aspects of Dadaism (Rosenblum
He set out as a pioneer, aware that his adventure was a solitary one, wanting to break new ground at all costs…he invented and reinvented everything” (Photographs 11). What this means is that he was not afraid to push the boundaries, and try something new and different from what the norm was. Man Ray also understood just how important lighting was, and the recording of light was very important to him. As stated in Man Ray’s Photographs, “His rayographs represent a kind of quintessence of the photographic process, recording the passage of light through translucent objects or the shadows of solid tones…Man Ray was not a photographer. He was an avant-garde artist who used photography as a means of research” (Photographs 12). The concepts that deal with Dadaism and Surrealism are what inspired the climate of photo-collage, montage, cameraless images, and experimentation. Man Ray’s rayographs came about through experimentation, and used his name and the light source to come up with the title. They were cameraless images that used translucent and opaque materials on photographic paper (Rosenblum