'Still' by Michele Aboud at Black Eye Gallery

eloise by michele aboud

Michele Aboud is one of Australia’s most respected photographers, whose work has featured in 13 exhibitions from Toronto to Sydney. On June 12^th she will unveil her 14^th show - ‘Still’ at the Black Eye gallery in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Here is an exclusive preview.

Sydney and Auckland street style in WWD

Street style photography is an enormous component of the fashion blogosphere, which has in fact launched blogging empires (The Sartorialist and Jak + Jil to name but a few). This photoreportage genre however definitely predates the net. Bill Cunningham’s first street style shots were published in The New York Times in 1978, but he first began documenting the fashion choices of ordinary people on the street during WWII. British style magazine i-D has a 30 year archive of its signature street style shots - aka “Straight-Ups” - on its website. And WWD, where Cunningham worked briefly, has had its own longstanding series of street style shots called They Are Wearing. As the paper's Australasian correspondent since 1996, I have shot quite a few “TAWs” in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Seoul and Taipei for WWD FAST and (Fairchild News Service's now defunct menswear paper) DNR. During the Spring/Summer 2011 show season WWD kicked off a series of global TAW galleries in the 'Eye Scoop' section and yesterday two of mine went up, both shot last month. Here is the Sydney gallery and here is the Auckland one, which was shot around Vulcan Lane during New Zealand Fashion Week. Not including this random shot, above, which was taken for WWD FAST at Sydney's Glenmore Road, Paddington intersection in May this year. Perhaps you might recognise some of your mates. 

Bluralism, apparently now also a legit advertising medium

etro via TFS

Each time frockwriter has brought this subject up over the past 15 months, it appears to have rattled the cages of the flat earthers, who like their photography crystal clear. The deluge of blurry images taken on cellphones at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in April 2009 - christened "Bluralism" - was denounced as "a demonstration of the failure of new media". Three months later, when we reported that New York’s Stephen Weiss studio had staged an exhibition of artists' cellphone images, one commenter noted “New media is an interesting, rapidly expanding force... but how does this compare to that of other entities that actually create imagery that has a lasting impact culturally”. What to make, then, of the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 advertising campaign from Italian fashion brand Etro, which bears a distinct resemblance to blurry, amateur, backstage cellphone photography? Irrespective of whether or not a cellphone was actually used for the job, or the effect was achieved in post-production, that's precisely the look Etro appears to have been trying to achieve. Those crazy Italians. Further details on the campaign, ie names of the relevant creatives, have yet to emerge.

Another empowering image courtesy of the fashion industry

 dario salamone/the ones 2 watch

  

This one is by photographer Dario Salamone, from an editorial story published in The Ones To Watch. That's the emerging talent website operated by models.com, but which was founded and continues to be edited by Australian Rosie Daly (MDC's New Faces editor). The model is Russian Alonya Zubakina and according to the accompanying notes, the shoot – titled “Unholy Wood” - is “A story shot on film about the darkness of the sacred and the sublime of nature, inspired by the power of natural light, relics, votives and Alena’s [sic] beauty". Coincidentally, its publication comes at a time when the practice of stoning women once again finds itself under the western spotlight.