Image-Making

Photography, editorial, production: how visual images are made

About the collection

An image is not a snapshot. It is the result of decisions: light, frame, chemistry, model, editing, publication context. This collection covers photographic processes, authors and publications that shaped the language of the image in fashion, documentary and fine-art photography.

Photographic processes

• Silver-Gelatin Print — tone, grain, archival surface.
• Large-Format Photography — perspective, discipline, camera movements.
• Photogram — image without a camera.
• Cyanotype — technique, colour, contemporary use.
• Contact Printing — image at negative scale.
• Contact Sheet — photography as a process of selection.
• Digital Photography — sensor, RAW, a new production chain.

Art direction

• Art Direction — designing the image before the shoot.
• Storyboard — image before image.

Genres and types of photography

• Fashion Photography — not a genre but a production system.
• Editorial Photography — image as argument.
• Advertising Photography — image as commercial instrument.

Post-production

• Retouching — from negative to digital image.
• Colour Grading — colour as authorial decision.
• Compositing — image from multiple realities.
• Visual Effects — the believability of the impossible.
• Adobe Photoshop — layer, mask and the editable image.
• CGI — anatomy of the digital scene.
• Diffusion Models — a new mechanism of image synthesis.

Publication and format

• Magazine Cover — image as issue interface.
• Magazine Spread — space between two pages.
• Photobook — sequence instead of single frame.

Moving image

• Title Sequences — typography in time.
• Motion Design — graphic design that gained time.
• The Fashion Show — from collection presentation to media event.

Authors

• Irving Penn — studio rigour, still life, portrait.
• Richard Avedon — white background, movement, psychological portrait.
• Helmut Newton — power, eroticism, urban environment.
• Guy Bourdin — colour, narrative, provocation.
• Deborah Turbeville — atmosphere, collage, unease.
• Sarah Moon — memory, fiction, the disappearing image.
• Paolo Roversi — Polaroid, softness, colour.
• Peter Lindbergh — black and white, movement, naturalness.
• Nick Knight — image-making, fashion, film, digital experiment.
• Steven Meisel — transformation, narrative, fashion image.
• Tim Walker — fantasy, set design, storytelling.
• Hiro — light, colour, surreal precision.
• Juergen Teller — flash, intimacy, anti-glamour.
• Solve Sundsbo — technology, transformation, no fixed style.
• William Klein — city, grain, fashion, cinema.

Image production

• Art Partner — an international agency working with leading photographers and directors.
• Iconoclast — a production company for music video and fashion content.
• Spring Studios — a London studio as image-production infrastructure.
• North Six — a New York production company between advertising and art.

Editorial environment

• Vogue — photography, editorial, fashion system.
• Harper's Bazaar — modernism, editorial laboratory.
• Dazed — youth culture, provocation, laboratory of the future.
• i-D — street style, identity, visual language.
• The Face — youth culture, style, visual laboratory.
• Visionaire — limited edition, magazine as object.