Robert Fairer | |
---|---|
Born | 1966 (age 57–58) |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Photographer |
Robert Fairer (born 1966) is a British fashion photographer who is known for his backstage photography in the 1990s until the 2010s. [1] Working for American Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar , his behind-the-scenes shots of supermodels, fashion designers, makeup artists, hair stylists and accessories designers would come to define the magazines 'front of the book'. [2] His first solo exhibition 'Robert Fairer Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs, and McQueen' was held at SCAD Fash Museum of Fashion. [3] His work is included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and has been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Design Museum, Musée national des beaux‑arts du Québec, LACMA, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the National Gallery of Victoria. [3] [4]
Fairer was born in 1966 in London. He grew up on King's Road, and was never without a camera. [5] Being part of London's emerging art and fashion scene in the 1980s and 1990s, he began photographing friends and was encouraged to pursue a career in photography. Fascinated by wildlife photography, he traveled to Africa for three months with a telephoto lens to document the animals on the savannah. [6] With the help of his wife and agent, he gained access to London Graduate Week in 1992, and photographed the Central Saint Martins graduate show which featured the collection of Lee Alexander McQueen. Fairer graduated from London School of Printing in 1993, and soon became a household name at fashion week in London, Milan, Paris and New York. With his Hasselblad camera, he discovered the backstage area by chance and began photographing behind the scenes beauty stories and supermodels minutes before they walked onto the catwalk. [7] He was one of the only backstage photographers and the stories didn't exist in the fashion magazines at the time. He used a 35mm camera and changed to medium format in the 1990s before changing to digital. He would try to sell his stories after the catwalk shows and bring a suitcase with transparencies and a portable lightbox to magazine editors including Fashion Editor Isabella Blow at Vogue magazine and Terry Jones at i-D magazine. From 1995 to 2001 he worked as a contributing photographer for Elle UK , Harper's Bazaar US and InStyle magazine. [8] In 2001 he was hired by American Vogue and became the magazine's contracted lensman working with Editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and Fashion Editor André Leon Talley on backstage, runway, editorial, celebrity and wedding stories. Directed to capture "life in the pictures," his backstage photographs would cover up to 15 pages in Vogue's front of book. [9] Having exclusive backstage access for a decade was made to a halt with the 2009 recession and arrival of social media. [10]
Fairer began digitizing his archive after working with the Victoria & Albert Museum on their publication accompanying the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition in 2015. [11] [12]
He has published five books devoted to his backstage photography. In 2021 his first solo exhibition 'Robert Fairer Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs, and McQueen,' was held at SCAD Fash Museum of Fashion and curated by director of fashion exhibitions Rafael Gomes. [3] The exhibition showcased the glamour and spirit of backstage from 1998 to 2010. It featured shots of supermodels Gisele Bundchen, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, makeup artists Pat McGrath and Val Garland, hair stylists Julien D'Ys and Orlando Pita, and milliners Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy.
Herbert Ritts Jr. was an American fashion photographer and director known for his photographs of celebrities, models, and other cultural figures throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His work concentrated on black and white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture, which emphasized the human shape.
John Charles Galliano,, is a British fashion designer. He was the creative director of his eponymous label John Galliano and French fashion houses Givenchy and Dior. Since 2014, Galliano has been the creative director of Paris-based fashion house Maison Margiela. Galliano has been named British Designer of the Year four times. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, he was named the fifth most influential person in British culture.
Nicholas David Gordon Knight is a British fashion photographer and founder and director of SHOWstudio.com. He is an honorary professor at University of the Arts London and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the same university. He has produced books of his work including retrospectives Nicknight (1994) and Nick Knight (2009). In 2016, Knight's 1992 campaign photograph for fashion brand Jil Sander was sold by Phillips auction house at the record-breaking price of HKD 2,360,000.
Lisa Fonssagrives, was a Swedish model, dancer, sculptor, and photographer. She is widely credited with having been the first supermodel.
Fashion photography is a genre of photography that portrays clothing and other fashion items. This sometimes includes haute couture garments. It typically consists of a fashion photographer taking pictures of a dressed model in a photographic studio or an outside setting. It originated from the clothing and fashion industries, and while some fashion photography has been elevated as art, it is still primarily used commercially for clothing, perfumes and beauty products.
Mario Eduardo Testino Silva OBE HonFRPS is a Peruvian fashion and portrait photographer.
Peter Lindbergh was a German fashion photographer and film director.
Hana Soukupová is a Czech model. She has participated in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows and modelled for the Victoria's Secret catalog.
Stella Tennant was a British model and fashion designer, who rose to fame in the early 1990s and had a career that spanned almost 30 years. From an unconventional aristocratic family, she worked with Helmut Lang, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and Gianni Versace. She worked for haute couture names like Valentino, and Dior by John Galliano and with photographers Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber, Paolo Roversi, and Tim Walker. Over the years she appeared in advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, Chanel, Hermès and Burberry.
André Leon Talley was an American fashion journalist, stylist, creative director, author, and editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. He was the magazine's fashion news director from 1983 to 1987, its first African-American male creative director from 1988 to 1995, and then its editor-at-large from 1998 to 2013. Often regarded as a fashion icon, he was known for supporting emerging designers and advocating for diversity in the fashion industry; while the capes, kaftans, and robes he wore became his trademark look. Talley also served on the judging panel for America's Next Top Model.
Marco Glaviano is an Italian photographer and architect, who has worked for fashion magazines and brands on both sides of the Atlantic, and with many of the world's best-known models. He has been a pioneer of digital photography, being the first to publish a digital picture in American Vogue in 1982. His photographs of fashion, celebrities, landscapes, and jazz have appeared in numerous museums and are in private and public collections worldwide. He is the co-founder of Pier 59 Studios in New York City, which he also helped design.
Lindsey Brooke Wixson is an American model. She is known for her unique looks, defined in part by her "bee-stung lips", "rosebud pout", and gapped front teeth. She is best known for her campaigns with designers as Chanel, John Galliano, Versace Vanitas, Miu Miu, Jill Stuart, and Alexander McQueen.
Guido Palau, is a British hair stylist.
Simon Procter is an expatriate British artist and photographer who has collaborated with Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood. Through his work with the world's most famous fashion designers, Simon Procter is considered one of the most important fashion photographers of his time. Today, his works hang in many museums and galleries around the world. His artwork is held in collections and museums worldwide, and has been shown at Paris's Grand Palais, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Art Basel Miami and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In Britain, he is known for his work with Royal Ascot.
Guinevere Edith van Seenus is an American model, photographer and jewelry designer.
Niall McInerney is a fashion photographer, best known for his international catwalk photography.
Patricia Cleveland is an American fashion model who initially attained success in the 1960s and 1970s and was one of the first African-American models within the fashion industry to achieve prominence as a runway model and print model.
Neptune is the twenty-seventh collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It took inspiration from classical Greek clothing, 1980s fashion, and the work of artists influential in that decade. The runway show was staged during Paris Fashion Week on 7 October 2005 at the industrial warehouse of the Imprimerie Nationale. Two main phases were presented, with 56 looks total: the first phase comprised monochrome black clothing, while the second featured a white, green, and gold palette. The collection's clothing and runway show both lacked McQueen's signature theatricality, and critical reception at launch and in retrospect was negative. Items from Neptune appeared in the 2022 exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse.
The oyster dress is a high fashion gown created by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen for his Spring/Summer 2003 collection Irere. McQueen's design is a one-shouldered dress in bias-cut beige silk chiffon with a boned upper body and a full-length skirt consisting of hundreds of individual circles of organza sewn in dense layers to the base fabric, resembling the outside of an oyster shell. According to McQueen, the gown took a month's work for three people, who cut and assembled all the pieces individually. In addition to the original beige dress, a version with a red bodice and the ruffled skirt in rainbow colours was also created. The beige and red versions appeared in the Irere runway show, and were photographed for magazines to promote the collection.
The Horn of Plenty: Everything But the Kitchen Sink is the thirty-fourth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, made for the Autumn/Winter 2009 season of his eponymous fashion house. The collection drew on household trash and the aesthetics of classic haute couture fashion to satirise the fashion industry for its wastefulness and lack of originality. The Horn of Plenty also featured reimagined designs and reworked items from previous collections, serving as a retrospective of McQueen's own design history. Common design flourishes included houndstooth patterns, design elements overdone to ironic proportions, and prints based on the natural world. Production was shadowed by photographer Nick Waplington, who published a photo book documenting the collection's creation in 2013.