Fashion photography

Fashion photography is a genre of photography that portrays clothing and other fashion items. This sometimes includes haute couture garments. It typically consists of a fashion photographer taking pictures of a dressed model in a photographic studio or an outside setting. It originated from the clothing and fashion industries, and while some fashion photography has been elevated as art, it is still primarily used commercially for clothing, perfumes and beauty products. Fashion photography is most often conducted for advertisements or fashion magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Elle. It has become a necessary way for fashion designers to promote their work. Fashion photography has developed its own aesthetic in which the clothes and fashions are enhanced by the presence of exotic locations or accessories. The history of this type of photography was intertwined for its first decades with the fashion magazines in which the photographs appeared, replacing the fashion illustrations that initially dominated the magazines. It gained prominence as its photographers, such as Irving Penn or Richard Avedon, gained recognition. While the beginning of modern fashion photography is symbolically attributed to 1911, it was not until the mid-1930s that its popularity spread, with its heyday beginning after the Second World War. This photographic genre has spread from fashion magazines and is featured in coffee table books, art galleries and museums. Fashion photography has been in existence since the earliest days of photography. The oldest surviving photograph taken on camera was made by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826,but people would soon use photography to present costumes and garb. Beginning in 1856, Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione, a Tuscan noblewoman at the court of Napoleon III directed imperial court photographer, Pierre-Louis Pierson to help her create 700 different photographs in which she re-created the signature moments of her life for the camera.