Fashion history through the camera lens

The 5th International Photography Festival has started in Moscow's Manege exhibition hall. Over 60 exhibitions of classical and modern photographers will trace the history of fashion photography.

The festival is interactive. Every one of the more than 3,000 works presented at the festival has a code attributed to it, enabling people to vote by text message. The most active art-lovers will be awarded.

Those who feel like they can compete with the festival's participants can send their works to the Moscow House of Photography and enter a contest called “Fashion and Style from My Perception”.

An exhibition of the chosen works will take place in May. The organisers promise some valuable prizes.

“Winners will get scholarship at photography universities in Russia and abroad,” says Director of the Moscow House of Photography Olga Sviblova.

She believes it is essential to develop an original style to become a prominent photographer.

“In my experience, in the last 15 years the share of women in the photography industry has risen, which seems very unusual, as the profession is considered to be manly. But today it is mostly women, who make up the trend. However, to become a famous photographer it is not enough to know how to take pictures. Nobody cares if you can make shots as Rodchenko did it, you need to find your own style and it has to be new,” Olga Sviblova expands.

The opening day featured an exhibition by the celebrated British portrait and fashion photographer Norman Parkinson.

During fifty years of his career he shot the evolution of fashion since the 1920s. Parkinson has left an amazing heritage for fashion lovers and provided evidence of fashion history. 

He always insisted he was not an artist but a craftsman – however, a creative one. He revolutionised the British fashion world by taking models from studios to far more dynamic outdoor settings. 

“My grandfather was captivating, a real genius, just sort of gentleman you’d like to be around, very entertaining. I think photography for him was life. He was able to bring out the best in people, to make something boring exquisite. That was his gift,” recalls the photographer’s grandson Jake Parkinson.

Some say Parkinson was a romantic. Even though he believed that photography was not art. He used to say that shots must be seductive, sunny and happy. His style is definitely recognisable and special – probably because of the indefinable charm of cheerfulness and self-irony proper to his works.