BEAUTYART
Fashion photography has a strong commercial interest in producing aesthetically pleasing, alluring and dramatic imagery. London-based beauty and fashion photographer, Iain Crawford, embraces these ideals with an intensified and playful flair, giving his personal work an ‘art for art’s sake’ quality through his fun, experimental style. Crawford’s career has led him to shoot campaigns for many of the world’s top brands and receive commissions from various elite fashion magazines. Yet, within his work, a profit-driven world is abandoned for one of pure enjoyment. His high-speed approach to photography has a strong graphic and textural quality that results in purely entertaining, electric-modern imagery – capturing his models in a state of frozen, colourful chaos.
What is most fascinating about Crawford’s images is their graceful composure, yet which, paradoxically, comes from a moment of complete unpredictability. The momentary connection shared between movement, texture and model is erratic, however Crawford’s images portray a glamorous kind of opulence and an intensified sense of anticipation for each, unique photographic result. Movement captured within an image always excites the mind and eye, especially when combined with profuse colour, lighting and materials – Crawford’s work is a visual celebration entirely for our sensory pleasure.
Yet, there is also a disturbing element to this series, founded by the relationship between each subject and their surroundings. As commonly seen in beauty and fashion photography, his models are poised, gently expressive and controlled, with an unyielding goddess-like aura. But something about this composure amidst explosive colour and motion greatly affects the viewer, perhaps because of its deviance against natural human behaviour. In fact, Crawford’s series delves into a realm of conflict and contradictions, as he orchestrates a fusion of clashing colours, textures, time periods and subsequent states of mind, generating a sense of chaos against the forged facade of the fashion world.
Whether Crawford’s work aims to be didactic or submissive is unclear. Regardless, his ability to create aesthetically vibrant, stimulating, provocative imagery amongst an often monotonous, commercial industry is refreshing and visually stimulating to absorb.
LAINCRAWFORD.COM
SOURCE : T-SQUAT
