Dipping my Camera into Fashion, with Tessa Thompson and Prabal Gurung for the Met Gala

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Though I have chosen the documentary route for myself, my favorite photographers are Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, both famous and infamous for their fashion work. The latter comes from them often being posthumously called out as misogynist, a label I vehemently disagree with. But more on that in a different newsletter.

I have always looked at the fashion landscape with fear and envy. For a long time I thought that being able to construct intricate studio lighting was what made a great fashion photographer. Yet, I have seen plenty of people who combine intimidating strobe setups with lackluster photos. So if it's not the lighting, what is it?

Unlike documentary photography, with its many codes and regulations, fashion photography is the wild west of techniques and experimentation. Despite that, imagination is where many images fail. They get stuck in a glamor loophole of identical-looking models with the same sour, deadpan expressions and perfect lighting emphasizing emotional flatness. The risks Newton and Bourdin took, though not gone, since their concepts are cannibalized by nearly all fashion photographers, are largely hushed over. My biggest gripe with fashion photos is when, despite all the creativity available to them, they fail to transport me into a world of whimsy and desire.

A year ago I got the chance to work with a few fashion designers and make my first baby steps into fashion work. I haven’t shared the images because I wasn’t ready to commit to them. In the world of limitless possibilities, my documentary roots keep dragging me to the familiar safety of rules and reality, and I wasn’t sure where I wanted fashion to take me. Like with any other genre, whether documentary or portraits, it takes years to develop a visual language. With fashion, I am roughly at the level of my six-year-old nephew, who has the vocabulary but not the fluency needed for complex conversations.

To fight my documentary presets, I have acquired a magic bag of tricks to distort things in camera, a tactic that keeps me grounded before I step into the abyss of digital experimentation. Prisms, mirrors, plastics, projectors, gobos, gels, and cut-outs, all things I used to consider gimmicky, are ridiculously fun to use for both portraits (in moderation) and fashion (without moderation).

Retouching in fashion is both delightful and difficult. I can finally clone out things! Add elements! Change colors! To a documentary photographer, that feels like a feast after a lifelong fast. The dizzying infinite possibilities can also feel more constricting, because it's hard to decide what not to do. As my favorite quote from Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus goes, "'Everything is permitted' does not mean that nothing is forbidden."

A year ago, I did a collab with fashion designer Prabal Gurung to photograph his gorgeous designs right before the Met Gala. I worked with Tessa Thompson, Nicole Scherzinger, Precious Lee, and Shakira. Each shoot was fast, no more than 20 minutes in a small hotel room. I used my bag of tricks to create images out of context and build a different environment for each person. I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go based on the emotional register of the outfits, but the final portfolio was ironed out in post-production.

I didn’t share these images because I wasn’t ready for anyone’s input or criticism. When the work is still fresh and raw, a single discouraging word can make me run back to the comfort of documentary and abandon any silly endeavors. A year later, I am finally more or less comfortable with the shape my vision is taking when it comes to editorial fashion imagery, so I will be publishing them, one portfolio at a time.

Tessa Thompson was probably the easiest of the four to work with. The outfit was so playful and surreal that it crystallized my ideas faster than the others. My first instinct was a psychedelic Alice in Wonderland, but I wanted to keep the colors lean and bring in one red point of focus. A strange inspiration from the world of trash polka tattoos, with their distinct high-contrast red and black ink, helped create the universe for Tessa to live in.

I have found it useful to put all the images side by side when building a portfolio. I like to start with two images as a foundation, then bring in more photos. That helps keep the portfolio in a balanced emotional frequency and ensures it’s neither too monotone nor too jagged. For example, I really wanted to fit the motion blur portrait in, but I couldn’t get it to work with the rest because it felt repetitive.

Instead, I went with this one. I was seduced by the deep red, echoing my love of film director’s Wong Kar-wai luscious textures.

Stay tuned for Nicole, coming up next.

Find me on Instagram @dina_litovsky