Don’t Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next was organised by Foam in collaboration with guest curator Magdalene Keaney. The exhibition offers a stage to photographers who are bending the rules of fashion photography.
Don’t Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next offers an exciting glimpse into the wealth of contemporary practices in fashion photography, resulting in a dynamic, colourful and multi-faceted presentation. In the words of Magdalene Keaney: "If someone tells you not to stop, it means you must be doing something good to begin with! The title of the exhibition, Don’t Stop Now, was thus intended as a clarion call."
Those who document fashion are oftentimes as influential and significant as the fashion designers themselves. Fashion photography has long been an important cultural phenomenon. But the revolution of print, digital and social media has opened many doors for the current crop of emerging fashion photographers.
On one hand, they are following in the footsteps of their famed colleagues such as Mario Testino, Helmut Newton, Juergen Teller or Inez & Vinoodh. But on the other, they are carving out a place for themselves, whether they are playing with new forms of digital manipulation or experimenting with analogue techniques.
Installation Don't Stop Now in Foam, 2014 © Christian van der Kooy
The photographers featured in this group exhibition are: Brendan Baker & Daniel Evans, Mel Bles, Charlie Engman, Jonathan Hallam, Jamie Hawkesworth, Alice Hawkins, Erik Madigan Heck, Julia Hetta, Samuel Hodge, Axel Hoedt, Laetitia Hotte, Daniel Jackson, Immo Klink, Tyrone Lebon, Chad Moore, Laetitia Negre, Hanna Putz, Daniel Riera, Robi Rodriguez, Daniel Sannwald, Clare Shilland, Saga Sig, Jacob Sutton, Philippe Vogelenzang, Chardchakaj Waikawee (Air), Tung Walsh, Harley Weir and Ruvan Wijesooriya
Foam is sponsored by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Delta Lloyd, Gemeente Amsterdam and the VandenEnde Foundation.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The Don’t Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next exhibition starts out from the fact that fashion photographers are first and foremost photographers. The exhibition provides a platform for a new generation of image-makers who work with fashion.
Variety and hybrid are two major characterisations of the work of these young photographers. The exhibition shows the diversity in approaches, as well as the abundance of photographic methods. Developments in fashion photography proceed for the most part equally as those in other fields of photography. Contrary to the possibilities presented by digital technology, many emerging photographers turn to analogue techniques and process their own images in the darkroom.
Some of the photographers are particularly interested in the artificial character of the fashion image and are pushing the limits of the medium via manual interventions and manipulation; others, on the contrary, investigate the possibilities offered by the digital aesthetic. To do so, various forms are juxtaposed and combined, such as studio and location shots, and genres such as still life, landscape, portrait and abstraction. Collage, sculpture, installations and performance also naturally assume a place in their method of working. The most important rule is that there are in fact no rules.
The emergence of zines, independent underground publishers and self-publishing has offered a welcome alternative to the monopoly position long held by the major publishing companies. This has created a kind of underground circuit that allows more space for experimentation, existing parallel to the world of the established global fashion industry. The opportunities presented by self-publishing and social media are for many of the photographers discussed here a major instrument of promoting their own work without mediation by galleries, agencies or established institutions.
Concurrent with this exhibition, a book by Magdalene Keaney with the same title has been published by Thames & Hudson. Don’t Stop Now: Fashion Photography Next is intended as a positive statement regarding the work of the young photographers included in the exhibition and the book, both now and in the future.