On a more profound level great fashion photographers such as: Dahl-Wolfe, Hoyningen-Huene, Klein, Bassman, Avedon, Newton, and Penn not only served the fashion industry and print media as image reporters, but became the tastemakers themselves.   They often invented a visual lifestyle where the clothes, (and, by extension, the models) became the evidence of a larger, often fantasy world. Similar to a child with his nose longingly pressed against the glass of a candy store window – participating in this ‘created’ and glamorized consumer world meant possessing the clothes or objects that were photographed.  Ownership of these material goods become the entry ticket into an exciting but usually imagined life.

All artists work within different sets of constraints.  Photographers who shoot fashion have to serve the commercial world with their demands of deadlines, budgets, and navigate through the mercurial tastes of editors and publishers.   However, their work enjoys a heightened presence and is more “looked at” then the work of other types of photographers.  The trade-off for helping to sell a product is that the great fashion photographers have had the ability to create memorable images that fascinate, seduce, shock, and inspire us. They have become legends in their own right. Their great photographs transcend the boundaries of commerce, time and taste to become cultural icons.