Though few can afford the clothes, millions consume the pictures. Indeed, numerous photographers — Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Diane Arbus among them — did some of their greatest work on assignment for magazines.

But now the fashion world is in crisis: It is producing too much, moving too fast, and, with worrying frequency, offending consumers due to an inability to pivot convincingly from a position that champions a censoriously narrow vision of beauty. Brands are closing, and magazines are folding or becoming fully digital.

Can the fashion photograph, of the sort that has littered bedroom walls and been reposted again and again on Instagram or Tumblr, survive?

Probably not as we know it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The End of the Dream

Even before the pandemic, conditions had grown tricky for the production of great fashion imagery. Budgets were being slashed. A shoot that in the past would have lasted two weeks was allocated two days, and photographers routinely tasked not just with producing an advertising campaign or editorial spread, but with creating social media and behind-the-scenes content as well.

Source: New York Times

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