Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/56249
Beach Gear, an image from an advertising campaign for Nordstrom, 2005. Clockwise from top: Irving Penn's Corset Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, 1994; Penn's Harlequin Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), 1950; Terry Richardson's Untitled (red lips), 2011. Twentieth-Century titans like Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Herb Ritts have been embraced as fine artists by some of the best institutions in the world. find acceptance in the greater art world. Things are changing, though. Twentieth-Century titans like Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Herb Ritts have been embraced as fine artists by some of the best institutions in the world (the Getty in Los Angeles is opening a major Ritts retrospective on April 3). There's an increasingly wide collector base for work born on the page; traditional art galleries are no longer shy- ing away from the stuff, and with more and more fine artists getting in on the action (Cindy Sherman, Juergen Teller and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, among them) snobbish naysayers have been forced to give other high-sheen out- put a closer look as well. For Vince Aletti, a prominent photography critic and adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, it's these crossover artists that have laid the groundwork for a more serious consideration of con- temporary fashion photography as a whole. It's a simple enough argument: if accredited art-world luminaries are willing and eager to tackle fashion, why not examine those who've made it their life's work? "There are enough people working in both areas and working seriously," he says. "I don't think a good curator of contemporary photography could ignore that work or not look at who else is working in the field." The Museum of Modern Art was, in some ways, a trailblazer in this recon- sideration with the 2004 exhibition "Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 126 BAL HARBOUR 1990." Every single piece on view was originally published in a fashion maga- zine or advertising campaign—once a faux pas of sorts for museum-worthy work. "The people they included in that show were the obvious crossovers— Sherman, Tina Barney, Nan Goldin," Aletti says. "But they also included a num- ber of people who work primarily in fashion—Cedric Buchet, Mario Sorrenti, Steven Meisel. It was a good range and it was a significant thing for a museum like that to pay really close attention to this area. It becomes easier for curators to make the leap and see the connections [between fashion photography and fine art photography] when they see that there's strong work being done." A similar survey, titled "Face of Fashion," at the National Portrait Gallery in London followed and in 2009, ICP, a longtime advo- cate for any and all photography, dedicated an entire year of programming to fashion-born and fashion-inspired work. Mario Testino scored a 2010 solo show at the Thyssen Bornemisza mu- seum in Madrid; Annie Leibovitz nabbed a massive survey at the Hermitage in Moscow last summer; and, on the heels of last Fall's survey at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the late great Helmut Newton will have his first full ret- rospective at Paris' Grand Palais from March 24 through June 17. The crossover action continues to be ripe as well, with Jack Pierson sign- ing on to shoot Bottega Veneta's Spring/Summer 2012 ad campaign (succeed- COPYRIGHT CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS INC.; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND OHWOW