down with bling and glam

Recently went to the newsagent to get the latest issues of PHOTO and Réponses Photo. Not too sure why I keep buying the former and giving it yet another chance (see one of my older blog posts). It was a special fashion issue. In my opinion, just a lame excuse to publish lots of garishly coloured sexy and/or porno chic fashion pictures. Is anyone else out there becoming really irritated with a) the vacuousness of this whole wave and b) the assumption that we're all happy to fawn on this like a crowd of merry twerps.

One of the things that irritate me the most is how a lot of these photographers pretend to be thoroughly original and subversive, whilst simply reproducing tired, meaningless and ultimately quite boring images.

This month's issue of PHOTO did however carry one article that I liked but whose feature in the magazine wasn't withour irony - about a collector from Houston who'd gathered one of the most impressive collections of fashion and nude photographs. I really liked this guy for his guiding principle, which was to buy only photos that he liked, regardless of name etc., whilst often developing relationships and friendships with the artists.

Seems delightfully ironic in the context of this bling/glam fashion issue since the essence of fashion is in fact to tell you what you ought to like, or to pretend to like.