Fashion Photography

Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items, conducted most often for advertisements, catalogues, online clothing retailers and fashion magazines. It has existed since the earliest days of photography itself — and each change in photographic technology, from halftone printing to digital sensors, has changed what fashion photography could be.

From the First Fashion Model to the Magazine Age

In 1856 Adolphe Braun published a book containing 288 photographs of Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione, a Tuscan noblewoman at the court of Napoleon III, depicted in her official court garb — making her, in effect, the first fashion model. In the first decade of the 20th century, advances in halftone printing allowed fashion photographs to be used in magazines, and the genre acquired its mass audience.

War interrupted it. From 1939 the flourishing industry all but stopped as World War II began; the United States and Europe diverged, Paris was occupied, London was under siege and Vogue Paris shut down briefly in 1940, isolating the era's fashion capital. In postwar London, John French pioneered a new form of fashion photography suited to reproduction in newsprint, using natural light and low contrast — a plainer, more modern look for a changed world.

The Digital Transformation

Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors to capture images focused by a lens, storing them as computer files ready for processing, viewing, digital publishing or printing — replacing the chemical process of exposing and developing light-sensitive film and paper. Digital methods revolutionised fashion photography: instant review, unlimited frames and immediate delivery changed both studio practice and economics.

In recent years the genre has grown still more popular with the expansion of the internet and e-commerce, which need photographs of every garment in every colour, continuously. Fashion photographs show clothing, footwear and accessories, on models who promote and display the products or serve as visual aids for the work. The fashion photographers summary linked from this page covers the practitioners; the fashion week photos and fashion models summary linked alongside show the genre at work.

Editorial, Catalogue and Campaign

The genre divides by client. Editorial photography — magazine stories — is the freest, telling a mood or narrative around the clothes. Campaign photography sells a brand's season, and must be beautiful and unmistakable at billboard distance and thumbnail size alike. Catalogue and e-commerce photography is the most disciplined: garment after garment, consistently lit, true in colour, because its job is information a buyer can trust. Most working photographers practise in more than one division, and the digital era has made the third the largest employer of the three.