What Lies Beneath
For most people, fashion is beautiful lighting, expensive clothes, and perfect bodies. For Steven Meisel, Geof Kern, and Helmut Newton – that’s just the surface. The real meaning lies beneath. They treat fashion photography as a storytelling language with uncomfortable content: social oppression, consumerist absurdity, violence behind the flash, sexuality as a tool of control.
Steven Meisel has been provoking the fashion industry for decades. In campaigns and editorials – often in Vogue Italia– he presents dark, uncomfortable worlds: simulated police brutality (State of Emergency, 2006) or satirical portrayals of plastic surgery obsession (Makeover Madness). For Meisel, fashion is a mirror of societal obsessions – distorted, but true. His images mimic media aesthetics, but their staging disorients the viewer – forcing reflection, even when we came only for beauty.
Geof Kern is all about theatricality and irony. His photos resemble Wes Anderson movie stills, but beneath the humor lies a critique of alienation, the emptiness of consumerist life, and the illusion of prosperity. Even lingerie in Kern’s images speaks of the human condition – while styling becomes grotesque. He stages reality like a puppet show, with roles preassigned – every pose by the “protagonist” tinged with loneliness.
Helmut Newton takes a different tone – sharp, controversial, often accused of misogyny. Yet his women are strong, cold, dominant. Newton played with eroticism, tension, and power. In fashion, he searched not for beauty, but for instinct. For Newton, seduction always carried a second meaning – it was strategy, not just aesthetic. His images are brutally sensual – showing the body as a field of force, struggle, and boundary, where crossing the line is more than just a stylistic gesture.
This isn’t just fashion.
It’s photography that pretends to show clothes – but really shows us. Our obsessions. Our blindness. Our need for control and illusion.
Meisel, Kern, and Newton gave us more than photographs. They gave us the courage to move beyond the form – to use fashion photography as a storytelling tool not just about garments, but about people. They showed that commerce and content, narrative and form, beauty and discomfort can coexist.
Thanks to them, we know every photoshoot can have a hidden layer – if we have something to say. It’s not about copying their style, but embracing the awareness: a photo can be more than an image – it can be commentary, question, or manifesto.
What we do with a camera is not just documenting style.
It’s constructing meaning.
recomendations:
Steven Meisel WIKI : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Meisel
Geof Kern Website: https://www.geofkern.com
Helmut Newton Foundation: https://helmut-newton-foundation.org
cover photo: