Fashion Questions.

When Fashion started...
Fashion Photography has been in existence since the early days of photography. In 1856, Adolphe Braun published a book containing 288 photographs of Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione, a Tuscan noblewoman at the court of Napoleon III. This made her the first fashion model.

1. When is an image a Portrait when is it a fashion photograph?
I would say that a portrait is more creative, Like a piece of art than a fashion photograph as fashion photography mainly sells products like clothes and accessories. It is more commercial. depending on if the image is going in a magazine like vogue or not…

2. To what degree should an image manipulated to go into a fashion magazine?
In the film they manipulate the image by choosing the right model for the right sort of outfit. They choose just 1 or none of the photos taken by the photographer to make it into the magazine. They will also Photoshop the pictures to air brush the models face and make it "Perfect". They change the structure of the face, Like making it symmetrical and making the eyes the same size at the same level. They will also change skin tone and the models body... Making her/him slimmer.

Taking all this into consideration I think that they're should be a line drawn as to where photos can be air brushed and manipulated to make the models look better in the eyes of the readers as there is a lot of girls/woman mainly younger looking at the magazines. which leads them to think that they are not perfect because they don't look like what they see in the magazines....

The sets they use will also be particular to the product they are advertising. Something summery may be advertised at a beach.
They have to make the model look perfect for the sort of product they are advertising, otherwise it would look like they've just thrown products and a model together to try and get a good picture.
3. Is there a clash between the creative and commercial side of fashion Photography?
Where some people like to photograph models for creative means others want to earn money out of it and wont use a specific image if they don't think it meets the needs of the commercial side of photography, whether or not it is a good photograph or not...

What clashes occur in the film between the creative and commercial?
Commercial photography wins in the film as the person making the decisions about what goes in the magazine and what doesn't, She needs to make the best decision to make money for the company. So unfortunately commercial wins over creative in the movie.
She makes a lot of harsh decisions regarding the images for the magazine but I think she knows what she's doing and also what she's looking for... If you don't know what sells in the magazine and what the readers like then the magazine will loose a lot of its money as loads and loads of people read it. an estimate of 1,250,000 so if the managers of the magazine are not harsh between what's creative and what's commercial they may loose a lot of readers.
Do you agree? Why?
I see why commercial wins over creative photography in the magazine industry however I think that the photographs should be presented somewhere as they are still amazing images that have had a lot of thought and time put into them just for one person to not allow it to have the audience it deserves.