The Lines Keep Blurring

I've come to the conclusion (or, at least, it's my opinion) that the lines between fashion photography and pretty girl shooting (a.k.a., sexually-driven glamour photography) have become blurred like never before. It's also my opinion that glamour photography is having a greater impact on fashion photography than the other way around.

It seems to me that fashion shooting often tries to hide behind a veil of moral legitimacy: While it routinely uses sex (appeal) to sell its wares, it maintains a facade that pretends sex ain't what it's about or ain't what's being exploited to sell the products it represents. If that were true, of course, fashion models wouldn't need to be uber-beautiful and/or uber-sexy men and women, captured in ways that focus on those sex and beauty qualities. Agencies, for instance, would simply recruit marginally attractive men and women from local Walmarts to act as flesh-and-blood coat-hangers in the images that sell fashion's products.

Glamour photography is more honest. It's designed to sell the model. It sells the model's beauty and sex appeal. It's up-front and straight-up in its intent. The responses it strives to evoke in its viewers aren't deceptive and they don't pretend to be something else. When such images are used to sell something, the something it's selling is, for the most part, right in line with what the image is selling in terms of the model, i.e., sex!

Since glamour modeling has become more and more accepted or, at the very least, routine and often-seen by many, the fashion industry has jumped on the sexy-glamour bandwagon like never before. They no longer seem preoccupied with concerns about provoking a moral backlash. (Which might once have had a serious negative impact on the products it touts.) Heck, even pornstars like Paris Hilton and Jenna Jameson have become legitimate subjects for use as vehicles to sell fashion products that, just a few years ago, Madison Avenue would never have used. (If you don't think Paris Hilton qualifies as a "pornstar" you don't know much about Paris Hilton's resume.)

The pornstar-model, captured in something of a fashion-like manner (in the first image but not so in the second) is Jennifer. MUA was Katy. Image captured with a Canon 5D, 28-135 IS USM, ISO 100, f/5.6 @ 125th. Mola Beauty Dish for the main with two strip boxes, either side, from behind. In the first set of images I shot with Jennifer, I specifically said to her, "You're not a pornstar. You're a fashion model and that's what you keep being until we get some of those clothes off and I tell you otherwise." I got a big smile from her in response to that direction and then she did her thing.