NEW ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE BEING USED IN PHOTOGRAPHY
by clifford Elgin

In the late 1990's Crewdson was one of a handful of artists that took photography and transformed it into an over the top Hollywood event. His photos are major extravaganzas that require crews of set designers and actors along with a great deal of effort in order to fulfill the undertaking. With the grandiose special effects and large budgets, Crewdson has placed himself at the forefront of a movement in photography that is changing ideas of what an artist can achieve. Jeff Wall and Peter Garfield are also artists who, along with great expense and deliberation, produce elaborate still images. These images are following a course parallel to the better photographers gracing the pages of today's fashion magazines. The photographers producing these images are creating a new form of the short story through the use of a narrative without beginning or end.

Sherman has had a large influence upon fashion photography over the last two decades. Many of the photographers hired by the fashion magazines stepped right out of the liberal arts colleges that champion her narrative sensibilities. In many ways the boundaries between fashion and artistic photography just don't exist the same way that they do between illustration and painting. This is because the editors of leading fashion magazines and directors of advertising houses are encouraging their photographers to explore ideas that grab the viewers attention. And one thing that this narrative technique does well is to engage the viewer with the snippet of narrative unfolding on the page. Instead of just showing a lady in repose wearing a lovely dress, this medium allows for some twisted interactions that require one to pause for a moment. The clothing becomes secondary to the story that is unfolding, the intent is that subconsciously a viewer might want to emulate the sexy characters in this story.

From the 1980's back to the earliest usage of photography and its use in enhancing the appeal of a dress, the medium was vested in selling clothing in a traditional manner. This would entail most probably an attractive lady standing as though on a fashion runway or as a mannequin. The finest photographers of each generation flocked to newspapers as correspondents and magazines as fashion photographers. This is due to the fact that so few photographers could live off of this practice for the sake of artistry alone. Those who ventured into the medium of high fashion did find inspiration and produced countless memorable layouts, but they were always set inside certain pre-ordained boundaries. After decades of traditional fashion photography, MTV, Cindy Sherman, and David Lynch sparked overall awakening to the possibilities of a new narrative juggernaut.