“Before I worked with Steven, I just showed up in the clothes I was wearing, stood in front of the lights, and got my picture taken. With Steven, a team of people descended on me, started to undress me. Someone grabbed my hair, another grabbed my face, another started helping me try on various bits of clothes, and they all seemed to be speaking a language I didn’t understand—the language of Steven Meisel.”
-Madonna, speaking about Steven Meisel in Vogue Magazine’s feature story about the famed and reclusive photographer.
I will assume that most non-fashion photography people out there don’t really look at Steven Meisel and think, wow, amazing photographer, but in all honestly I do. Like Charlotte Cotten who is quoted in the article, I would put Meisel in the same group of commercial artists like Avedon, Penn and Newton. I would add Guy Bourdin to that list.
My slightly heated morning conversation with the lady of the house confirmed my assumption, that Meisel simply doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Part of her argument is that those other photographers were artists first and worked on personal projects while Meisel is all fashion so to speak and quite a bit over the top in that respect which makes it hard to take him seriously.
Who knows what kind of personal projects Meisel has stored away in the closet but I don’t need much more than his 30 year dominance and career in the fleeting world of fashion to elevate his status to artist with a capital A.
There is no doubt that Meisel is surrounded by an aura of mystery and strangeness but look at the long history of his work and you can see a great mind and vision at work. This guy has shot every Italian Vogue cover since 1988 and is still going strong. Can you imagine what his archive looks like?
While not every shoot is completely successful, looking at his work over the years one can really see a consistency and obsession with the fashion image and its prominent place in our culture.
Yes I know that fashion photography is essentially selling a product and has grossly distorted our sense of reality, but Meisel’s version is also like a giant filter of our collective history and a glaring reflector of the art, music and cinema we digest each and every day.
Most people probably just see insane and out of control fashion when they look at Meisel’s photographs and they would definitely be right, but there is also a subversive critique and irony in the work that gives it extra dimension.
Of course I’m thinking about the photographs he made for various Versace ad campaigns inspired by The Stepford Wives and Valley of the Dolls. Meisel describes those photographs as having “a glamour to it, too — a sick glamour, but a glamour.”
Or the recent controversial spreads in Italian Vogue called State of Emergency and Supermodels Enter Rehab.
I’m also thinking about a great series of spreads he did for Italian Vogue all shot in Los Angeles in 2000 that really captured the spirit and multifaceted dimension of the city and set the themes for the Versace ads.
No matter what you think about Meisel’s place in the history of photography, the article (and interview) is worth the read. I’m not sure if the version posted online is the full printed story but it’s an entertaining and insightful read nonetheless.
Illustration by Abbott Miller (
Jack Cardiff in 1960. (The Kobal Collection)
still from Black Narcissus, photographed by Jack Cardiff
Yves Saint Laurent with Entourage (via 
Early Photomontage from 1893
