Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon made splashes in the 70's and 80's by portraying the depiction of fashion in a new light. 'Saddled,' one of Newton's photographs from 1976, shows a lovely woman with a horse's saddle notched around her waist. This image does not necessarily speak at all about the clothing she is wearing. But because of the shocking nature of the image itself, it caused quite a sensation and gave credence to the decisions by other photographers to experiment.

Philip Lorca diCorcia's career started with the man concerned purely with the artistic side of photography. He graduated from Yale in the early 1980's and set about attempting to evoke passing moments of transition one can see in films. That is diCorcia was interested not in the dozen or so climactic narrative happenings in films, but the in scenes that show a person traveling from here to there. He became well known for his street scenes that portray crowds hustling between places. What made these images so unique is the quality of the light and near perfection of his work. Its not the narrative quality of these pieces that evoke sentiment from the viewer, just the ethereal moment caught in time. These "voyeuristic views often describe people (most often alienated women) who live in existential despair. The surfaces of the pictures are seductive; their lights and darks, through the advantage of digital printing where color is seen even in the blacks, achieve an atmosphere of morbidity in which the characters are trapped1."

With his fame, magazines such as 'W' hired diCorcia to travel abroad and produce fashion layouts. With his series "Cuba Libre" in 2000, diCorcia tackles the narrative seriously for the first time and is highly successful. His images read as post-modern Edward Hopper. "Philip-Lorca deCorcia, for instance, offers up images that glamorize third-world gangsters. One shows a gorgeous, luxuriously dressed woman who seems to be making a prison visit, waiting on a bench next to an elderly, underprivileged receptionist in uniform behind bars2." He follows around a blond Cuban lady through the denizens of Havana, placing her in one nefarious situation after another. In each image she is wearing a different set of clothing, and she might be lovely while wearing said outfit, but at least this viewer is much more focused on what might be occurring in each frame.