La narrativa subversiva en la fotografía de moda de Steven Meisel

Resumo

This thesis deals with the photographic work of Steven Meisel (1954–), characterized by an activist stance in the fashion world, to which he belongs, making him unique. In the main hypothesis, we signal how a subversive discourse as his own brings together the commercial approach, characteristic of the fashion world, as well as artivism. This way, the in-depth analysis of his production includes a reconsideration of the impulses that have driven him to embrace such a discourse, and there is a comparative approach of, amongst others, the works of LaChapelle, Knight, Leibovitz, Weber, Toscani or Avedon. There is also an allusion to the theories of Crane or Gans, which show the dislocation of every mean of cultural production, whilst comparing the stands about the very concept of art of Krauss and Becker. The paper, structured in two sections, uses an inductive and correlational methodology that traces the correlations arising between the ground breaking aesthetic praxis and fashion photography in the time spawn ranging from the invention of the medium up to present days. This has made it possible to identify the activist connotations, defining its plastic and creative dimension, as well as studying its sociocultural influence. To conclude, it’s claimed that its imaginary and creative strategies, loaded with social, cultural, and political criticism, surpass the mere commercial function intrinsic to fashion photography to stablish themselves in an insurgent creative alternative. Likewise, the semantic and iconographic analysis of its production outlines the way in which its images interact with concepts and cultural values that vary depending on the topic discussed by the author.