Society Is Sold on Whatever Fashion Is Selling

For those who feel that the fashion industry is out to make a mockery of them, a new exhibition at New York's International Center of Photography will do little to convince them that their fears are unfounded.

The photographs, in the form of tear sheets, are clustered on the walls of the gallery, simulating the kind of visual cacophony that might assault a customer at a particularly artsy newsstand. Each photograph strains hard to lure the viewer's gaze through provocation, shock and pure weirdness. And many of them are successful. A lot of these aggravating, confounding, intimidating and rude photographs are incredibly compelling.

But as marketing tools, the images in "Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now" have nothing to do with selling clothes. At least, not in a linear, I-have-a-business-plan sort of way. It's true, what you've always suspected: The fashion industry is trying to mess with your head.

Consider the images of a childlike Dakota Fanning photographed by Juergen Teller. She wears pieces from the Marc Jacobs women's collection. And while consumers are accustomed to seeing women's clothes modeled by aberrantly tall and lithe teenagers, these photographs strain that conceit until it snaps. To call the Fanning pictures kiddie porn might be an overreaction. But the flat lighting and blank backdrop give them the look of a voyeuristic snapshot uploaded to the kind of Web sites whose visitors are one bad click away from a "Dateline" special.

The photographs are fascinating and insidious in the way they discount womanhood and hawk childhood. They are fodder for dissertations and NOW e-mail blasts. Debate them. Discuss them with a therapist. Explore them as cultural signposts. But what do they have to do with selling clothes? Are viewers to think that Jacobs is cool because he's willing to have such an unlikely figure model his clothes, and thus if a consumer buys those clothes she will be cool in the eyes of everyone who saw that photograph? What a circuitous and exhausting route to a simple point: Nice dress; buy it, please.

In a photo story called "Size Hero," shot by Steven Klein, a model is shown in various poses -- sometimes stretched out and at other times sitting upright in what appears to be a bus. She is fat, a fact that is emphasized by her posture and the scantiness of her attire. The clothes are not meant to flatter her physique but rather to emphasize its size. Is she heroic because she is willing to be seen in such a revealing manner? Because she is proud of her size in fashion's size 0 world? Or because she's willing to endure the lurid and rather demeaning gaze of the photographer?

The image demands attention, but it is not pretty. The nagging question, though, is whether the image is unattractive because of society's preconceived beliefs about slimness being a prerequisite for beauty -- or is this just an objectively ugly picture? It's a question worth considering, but what about the clothes? They go unnoticed. The focus of the image, the sales pitch, is all about flesh.

Fashion editorials long ago stopped being about enviably pretty models posing in attractive clothes in order to entice someone into spending money. For that kind of direct marketing of glossy fantasy, one can visit the basement gallery of ICP, where Edward Steichen's work from 1923 to 1937 is on view. It recalls the era when fashion photography was glamorous and obviously posed. Back then, the fantasy consisted of white women who embodied a certain socially acceptable upper-crust classiness posing in tasteful clothes.

Fashion at its most rarefied level -- which is the focus of this exhibition -- is now a club that revels in its secret language of ennui, titillation and oddball references. For instance, the French edition of Vogue played to society's strange fascination with Anna Nicole Smith and her 2,000-year-old husband with images of a blond bombshell leaning over an elderly wheelchair-bound love interest.

Modern fashion photography strives to look like photojournalism, fine art, amateur photography or porn. It aims to look like anything but what it actually is. Photographers are dispatched to some faraway country or a nearby street corner to absorb local color or to find disaffected youth to serve as lively extras.

It's reassuring to be told that fashion doesn't have to be so pretty and so perfect as it was back in Steichen's day. But of course, that makes one wonder why it's necessary to spend so much money on something that is neither attractive nor pristine. Shouldn't imperfection be a bargain?

The fashion industry sees itself as reflecting the breadth of popular culture. But it remains nearly as ethnically homogenous as it was back when it was remote and rarefied. One of the few nonwhite stars of "Weird Beauty," either in front of or behind the camera, is model Naomi Campbell. She was photographed by Steven Meisel for the July 2008 issue of Vogue Italia -- the issue that was devoted to black women. The photo story is called "There's Only One Naomi" and one gets an eyeful of her naked torso about as often as one glimpses her fully clothed in designer merchandise. Campbell -- her body -- is far more memorable than anything she wears.

Despite its pretense and posturing, its obliqueness and occasional greatness, fashion photography remains fundamentally a sales pitch. It may no longer be selling clothes. But it agitates and captivates more than ever because something more valuable -- vulnerability, sexuality, power, dignity -- is always on the block.