Archeology of Elegance

When searching for inspirational photographers on the net people quite often wheel out the usual suspects when you ask who inspires them. But it sometimes takes a little more effort to find more photographers. Archeology of Elegance is filled with inspirational fashion photographers with photographs from 1980 to 2000, I guess its about a decade out of date, but few of the images look dated.

The written sections of the book offer an insight into the influences of the period but unfortunately is also so full of florid gibberish that I couldn't stomach reading it. Hey but that doesn't matter, what matters is that the book is packed with 215 illustrations from some great photographers. It even has a Terry Richardson photo that I like, which is pretty impressive. It has all the great names but also has a lot of great photographers you may not have heard of. One standout photograph for me was the velvety smooth image of Tyson Balou from the cover of The Face taken by Sølve Sundsbø. The image is retouched to hell and back but looks marvelous. I wasn't able to find an exact copy of the image but have used one from the same set, above.

The book isn't broken down by date as you would expect but it is split into sections based on the types of image. Glamour, Punk Rock, High-Tech and Futurism and Art. It scatters the photos through these sections without a timeline and rather bizarrely also includes some images from the 60s and seventies. There are some stunning images in here and there is a wide varieties of style to choose from.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in fashion photography to use as a basis for further study. I like it very much.