Thursday, August 25, 2011

What You See is Not Always What You Get...




Over the last few years, New York Magazine has established itself as one of the leading exponents of great photography. Mixing photo-journalism, pick-up, and the creative commissioning of fine art photographers, the magazine can regularly be counted on to deliver eye-catching images. Under Director of Photography Jody Quon (a longtime deputy to the New York Times Magazine's Kathy Ryan) and Editor Adam Moss the art of matching subject and photographer is both astute and surprising.

A great example is last week's memorable picture of gender-bending model Andrej Pejic by the renowned French photographer Valerie Belin. Belin does not usually do editorial work so the choice was as inspired as the result. On the surface, it's a photographic Gainsborough portrait. A beautiful person beautifully rendered in a distinctive style, but when you understand that the subject is in fact a man, you can't help but be drawn back to study the picture in greater detail to see what clues, if any, you missed. It's "The Crying Game" in a single frame. A picture worth at least the thousand words that you can read here.

3 comments:

Jonathan said...

Good photo, not a great photo, "study the picture in greater detail" Why, after knowing it's a chap? It changes nothing & if it is about attraction (which it is not) a standing dick has no conscience.

Anonymous said...

Wow! A truly great picture. And not just the subject but the photographer.

Andre Friedmann said...

Kudos, New York magazine. "Study the picture in greater detail" brings me back to a project (not mine, I only helped) photographing street walkers on West 14th Street in Manhattan's Meat Packing District in 1985. The most alluringly feminine prostitutes were men in varying states of transgender, and they scaled and presented themselves for male motorists at a distance, for their johns up-close. Victory was successfully fellating a straight john who remained unaware of the penis between the prostitute's legs. The money, the danger of discovery, the excitement all meant the prostitutes worked at a visual scale and task remarkably similar to Pejic and Belin.