A new generation of artists challenge accepted notions of the photographic portrait in this provocative exploration of the face. Amongst those included are Aziz + Cucher, Valérie Belin, Nancy Burson, Rineke Dijkstra, Lee Friedlander, Inez van Lamsweerde/Vinoodh Matadin, Orlan, Martin Parr, Thomas Ruff, and Gillian Wearing.

“Desir d’une femme pour un homme”, poemes futilescan be read as an intimate conversation between a man and a woman in words and images. It is also a collection of poems and drawings that began, strangely enough, with a fashion story. In the hands of Mathias Augustyniak, one half of the design duo M/M Paris, drawing is a powerful and introspective tool, a link between hidden worlds. As a Creative Director, Augustyniak often employs drawing to bring out the hidden message in photography. In the case of “Libertine,” a subliminally erotic fashion story by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Augustyniak’s subconscious caught up with him, ultimately leading him on a 13-day journey of the mind and the soul. The sexually explicit yet playfully childlike drawings gathered here track the path of that journey–a very personal, though not solitary or self-centered experience. Augustyniak in turn passed the drawings on to the French novelist Stephanie Cohen and commissioned the set of accompanying poems. Published in both French and English, the spare, enigmatic, and highly charged verse stands as a body of work all its own. In other words, the drawings don’t necessarily illustrate the poems, just as the poems don’t necessarily clarify the drawings. The two are in conversation and sometimes even contradiction.

contents 1 purple NEWS London San Francisco Milan New York Paris Monte-Carlo 2 BEST of the SEASON by Terry Richardson 3 purple INTERVIEWS Alexander McQueen Betony Vernon Stefano Gabbana Rudy Ricciotti David Lynch Emmanuelle Bercot Paz de la Huerta 4 purple FASHION WOMEN Retrospective Maison Martin Margiela Prête à tout Chan Marshall The New Decade Starts Now Chelsea Girl 5 purple NAKED Lara Stone by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin 6 purple FASHION MEN Kazahiro Saito Glenn O’Brien Jared Leto Fumihiro Hayashi William Eggleston 7 purple BEAUTY by Stefano Pilati 8 purple TRAVEL Foro Italico 9 purple DOCUMENTS Letter to Olivier Zahm The Real Richard New York Nudes 10 purple VISUAL ESSAY Ostia (the death of Pasolini)

Nan Goldin shoots campaigns for Prada, David LaChapelle does Camel cigarette ads, and Jurgen Teller got his start photographing models in “i-D”, “W”, and “The Face”. The debate between aesthetic images and commercial pressure has perhaps never been so relevant and complex as it is today, with the increasing commercialization of the art world, the not insignificant exploratory aspects of fashion photography, and our constantly expanding realm of visual references. To study these tensions and overlaps, “Chic Clicks” invited some 40 photographers to present both their free work and their published editorials from fashion magazines and advertising campaigns. Photographers well-known for their commercial work offer personal and exploratory prints; those who gained prominence in the fine arts display work they were subsequently hired to do for fashion companies and magazines. Accompanying essays approach fashion photography from various perspectives, from that of cutting-edge fashion magazines to the field of contemporary art photography. The photographers: Fred Aufray, Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm, Jean-Francois Carly, Donald Christie, Philippe Cometti, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Corinne Day, Horst Diekgerdes, Nathaniel Goldberg, Alexei Haye, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Tom Lignau & Frank Schuhmacher, Richard Prince, Blaise Reutersward, Cindy Sherman, David Sims, Mario Sorrenti, Hannah Starkey, Larry Sultan, Ike Ude, Erwin Wurm, and others Edited by Ulrich Lehmann & Jessica Morgan. Essays by Gilles Lipovetsky, Urs Stahel, Valerie Williams, Olivier Zahm. Introduction by Jill Medvedow. Photographers include: Fred Aufray, Anuschka Blommers, Jean-Francois Carly, Donald Christie, Philippe Comet, Corinne Day, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Horst Diekgerdes, Nathaniel Goldberg, Alexei Haye, Inez van Lamsweerde, Tom Lignau, Vinoodh Matadin, Richard Prince, Blaise Reutersward, Frank Schuhmacher, Cindy Sherman, Niels Schumm, David Sims, Mario Sorrenti, Hannah Starkey, Larry Sultan, Ike Ude, Edwin Wurm.

Fashion photography in the ’90s can be roughly divided into the glamour and grunge schools, with the former drawing much of its inspiration from Helmut Newton and the commercial photographers of the ’50s, and the latter dipping into the world of “art” photography for its references. In Fashion: Photography of the Nineties, edited by Camilla Nickerson (senior fashion editor at Vogue) and Neville Wakefield, the connection between the worlds of art and fashion is explored in a totally pictoral manner, dispensing completely with introductory essays or explanations of the choices of photographs and photographers presented. This approach is tremendously effective: the juxtaposition of full-page images from such fashion industry mainstays as Ellen Von Unwerth, Mario Sorrenti, and Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin with photographers known more for their interest in shocking, art-gallery images, such as Nan Goldin and Richard Prince illustrates well the extreme influence that such artists (as well as Larry Clark, who is not represented here) have had on commercial photography. This beautifully printed volume offers an imagistic history of the low-rent eroticism of the contemporary fashion-photo scene. While this look has been criticized as glamorizing drugs, in fact it seems here, when set alongside the overly made-up, perfectly posed models (without fat or pores) of the glamour scene, to provide a more realistic and attainable vision of beauty, and one that is no less compelling or erotic for it’s portrayal of splotchy skin or imperfect forms.