The Fashion Film festival in Milan is organised in collaboration with Vogue Italia and will once again feature short films, installations and documentaries. It will be held between 25Th and the 30Th of May, 2010 at the Palazzo Morando, 6 Via Sant’Andrea, Milan.
The National Portrait Gallery in London has dedicated a retrospective exhibition to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated photographers, Irving Penn (1917-2009).
The exhibition is brought together from major international collections and includes over 120 silver and platinum prints, many vintage, ranging from his portraits for Vogue magazine in the 1940s to some of his last work. The exhibition is a survey of Penn’s portraits of major cultural figures from the worlds of literature, Fashion, music and the visual and performing arts brought together from many international collections. Portraits include Truman Capote, Salvador Dalì, Marlene Dietrich, Christian Dior, T.S. Eliot, Duke Ellington, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicole Kidman, Willem de Kooning, Kate Moss, Jessye Norman, Rudolph Nureyev, Edith Piaf, Pablo Picasso, Harold Pinter, Igor Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams.
Penn’s photographs stand out for their elegance, the clean look of their images, a strong contrast between subject and background and a “less is more” aesthetic. These are the distinctive features of an oeuvre that marked and captured an epoch. The power of Irving Penn’s visual language is often found in the details and shades of his portraits. Through his sublime techniques of composition, light and printing, the character of his subjects is stripped naked before the camera lens.
Irving Penn said in 1975:
“Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world… very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.”
The exhibition in the The National Portrait Gallery in London will run until the 6Th of June 2010 and will travel afterwards to Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni where it will be on display from the 1st of July to 19Th of September 2010.
Photos: Irving Penn | Photo top and 6Th photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters | Photo bottom: Cate Gillon/Getty Images | The National Portrait Gallery
The turbo wave of the 80′s left its mark on the industry and on the whole cultural situation in Western Europe. The sound effect gives sensation of real physical power. This music genre, which originated in the Balkans, and its impact are the inspiration for the work of Serbian artist Baptiste Debombourg. The music becomes a conceptual model of behaviour and is translated into wall deformed by the power of a musical wave. This installation is melted with the architecture of the surrounding space and so becomes part of it.
Photos: Baptiste Debombourg | Patricia Dorfmann Gallery Paris | Galerie HO Marseilles | Galerija10m2 Sarajevo
A Shaded View on Fashion Film is a very interesting fashion film festival founded, curated and organised by international fashion icon and celebrated blogger Diane Pernet in cooperation with her co-producers David Herman and Antoine Asseraf. The festival was born in 2008 and back then launched at the Jeu de Paume during the last three days of the Avedon exhibition.
In this travelling festival she combines two of her big passions: film and fashion.
Diane Pernet on the subject:
“I would love fashion films to replace fashion shows but in reality I think a major change like that will take quite some time. Certain designers create spectacular fashion shows like Galliano or McQueen, but for the most part watching male and female models walk up and down the catwalk feels a bit last century to me. I think a fashion film is a new way to express a collection. What interests me is the intersection between fashion and film. For the near future fashion film is an additional way of experiencing fashion.”
A shaded view on fashion film festival 2009 trailer
ASVOFF is a festival including a film selection & competition, documentaries, features and installations. The common thread that binds this diverse program is the use of fashion, beauty and/or style as the principal subject, theme or cinematic aesthetic. The festival is a study in the drama, power and personification that fashion evokes and commands on screen. It tries to shake up the old rules of fashion by putting the focus on the moving image, in an industry long dominated by the “still” photographic medium.
Upcoming Festival tour dates and locations:
New York March 5th 2010 as part of F Scope art fair
Moscow, April 3rd 2010 as part of Russia Fashion Week
Hyères fashion festival, April 30th to May 30th 2010 Villa Noailles, Hyères
