Guy Bourdin, Untouched

Culture

I am going to assume that you are into fashion photography, and if you are, I am going to assume that you undoubtedly know the groundbreaking work of the French photographer Guy Bourdin. And even if you don’t know the name, you’ve seen the photos, the sexy without being cheap, the playful without being tacky images in which color burst off the page, the perspective questioned the conventional wisdom of your line of sight, and the careful staging let you know that photography is way, way more complicated than simply pressing a shutter button.

Ruth Asawa

Culture

A collective and hearty thank you ought to go out to the team at David Zwirner responsible for conceiving and executing the installation of Ruth Asawa’s hanging wire sculptures at West 20th Street.

Katsu Naito: Day Trip

Culture

In Volume 5 of our print magazine, we profiled New York City photographer Katsu Naito and his 2011 photobook, Westside Rendezvous, which is comprised of several Meatpacking District streetscapes but mostly portraits of transgender prostitutes that plied their trade there in the afternoons of the late 80s and early 90s.

YOUR OLD BAND TEE IS A LAME TREND

Culture, Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

This past June in Paris I was sitting in the lobby bar of the InterContinental hotel, catching up with a prominent boutique owner after the Haider Ackermann menswear show. She was in dour spirits. “How am I supposed to sell fashion when even people who go to shows don’t wear fashion?” she asked ruefully and rhetorically. She was referring to the way the continuing casualization of style has been taking a toll on designer fashion at large. She was right. Today, one can see fashion insiders sporting Adidas track pants or a Nike jacket worn by a so-called “fashion person,” as likely as say a Rick Owens leather or a Celine bag. Last season, Instagram feeds of street style photographers were flooded with images of fashion people in Thrasher magazine t-shirts. This time the trend seemed to pivot in a new direction, as time after time I spotted attendees in various band t-shirts – Hole, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and so on.