Fashion and Fiction Revisited, Online Magazine Updates, And Journeys From Spain

Online magazine updates of note, new and old:

* I've really enjoyed Revol the last couple of times I've seen it, and the latest issue is no exception. Hard to describe its appeal beyond the literal elements: photography, illustration, a bit of animation and text, mixed media, and random weirdness, all in an easy flip style page turning navigational interface.

* New issue of Idanda (which I raved about a while back) has an extended feature and a generous selection of photos from the "Fashioning Fiction in Photography" show I wrote about a month ago...very useful for those who can't make it to New York to see the show before it wraps up in June. The image excerpts are small but high quality, with lots of goodies, though I flinched when I saw old Nan Goldin images as well as the ubiquitous Cindy Sherman included -- I happen to like both photographers a lot, but I'm wondering what they have to do with this type of show.

As it turns out, so do the authors of the excellent article on the show. As one would expect, Philip Lorca di Corcia doesn't mince words and expresses his ambivalence with some of the dynamics behind the show and fashion photography generally.

‘I question whether the museum, as a highbrow cultural entity, felt obliged to include some of their usual suspects, like Cindy Sherman and others who are probably pretty peripheral to fashion photography, in an attempt to back up their position in case anyone criticized them for being frivolous,’ says di Corcia. ‘But people in the fashion world won’t think that half of the photographers on show here are players at all, while the art world will say that the fashion photographers featured aren’t the most interesting photographers out there.’

A really excellent read and feature -- go check it out.

Philip Lorca di Corcia image from W magazine, 2000

Larry Sultan image, from Visiting Tennessee, 2002

* In the same issue of Idanda, a new Phil Toledano series, featuring his same clean and clever way with a composition. (the series can also be found on his personal website) "When I shoot, I subtract things. What if I went to an environment that was missing everything. Instead of subtracting, I would have to add. So I went to the Arctic Circle."

Phil Toledano image, from Arctic Circle series

* Txema Yeste is a Barcelona based editorial, fashion and photodocumentary photographer with an odd but interesting hybrid of very slick and very rough work in several genres. As one would expect, the editorial and fashion for clients like Diesel is very polished, while the photojournalism essays seem to be shot with wide angle lenses right up against subjects and environments in bright, unflattering light -- the opposite of a romanticized, National Geographic approach.

Viewers who enter Yeste's site are greeted with an introduction to La Viuda, a pleasant editorial essay that is nicely shot, but *avoid* this essay unless you're willing to bear with painful loading times (plus music) for the flash slide show. The images on the rest of the site are more easily accessible...I liked "Around and About", the odyssey of a truck driver transporting cargo thousands of miles around Europe, and "Blue Tarpaulin", featuring the migration of North Africans home during the summer from their jobs in Spain (on the menu, click on "There Somewhere" to be directed to the photojournalism essays).

Txema Yeste image, from "Around and Around"

A little more about Yeste can be found in this (badly) translated interview.