I have never understood models. I find it really hard to find beauty in that or to discover beauty because the beauty was so obvious. I always found it more interesting to discover beauty. With models I never knew what to do. It was uncomfortable for me that they were always so beautiful. I didn’t know what I could discover there that wasn’t so plainly obvious.
— Anton Corbijn, via NYTimes.com.
9 Comments
This resonates with me. And, is probably why magazines with photographs of a model on the cover don’t sell nearly as well as magazines with a female actress on the cover. Actresses have a story to tell, and the model is just being beautiful.
@Erica Chadwick, could’nt agree more. a model is like shooting in a perfect white space studio, whereas someone with character is like a wherehouse ( does that make sense?). One is clearly more interesting and inspiring than the other, although many would argue one is more ‘perfect’ than the other.
Really a great article! I just wish I was in NYC so I could go and see the work in person.
I think there is a lot of truth in what he talks about in finding the person and for sure there is a very big difference in fashion than portrait work. Fashion is much more vein but a portrait goes beyond.
Again, a very good read and inspirational!
Cheers,
David
It reminds me of Cartier-Bresson when he said that ‘The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.” Good portraits are about understanding people and fashion is about clothes and how they look on your model. Of course you need to understand clothes as well.
I really agree with this article.
The model is a representative of world’s ideal style of a person.
The critical point of pictures with model is what they do in the pics…
That’s a really good way of thinking of it.
So a model is just an empty vessel of beauty, whereas an actor, such as Josh Hartnett, January Jones, or Suzanne Summers are profoundly interesting and deeply fascinating to photograph?
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then make the model look ugly. some photographers do and seem to get great exposure for it.
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