FASHION FEATURE: Behind the shoot ‘SALUTE’

FASHION FEATURE: Behind the shoot ‘SALUTE’-

“I think that a photographer, like a well-behaved child, should be seen and not heard” — Helmut Newton

Throughout time, photography has played a pivotal role in creating the image that fashion has today. Photographers, through sheer will of imagination and technical expertise, create images that bring to physical existence the fantasy that the clothes are conceived from.

Fashion photography itself can be traced down to the early 1800s, prior to that we had artists who would sketch garments for affluent women. It wasn’t until photographs were introduced that it became easier to transport those images in a relatively faster and more effective manner.

That they created larger-than-life images of the character portrayed by the model when wearing the clothes, and which subsequently helped enhance the image of the designer or design house itself, speaks volumes of photographers’ contribution to the fashion industry. With time, these fashion photographers honed their skills and developed their individual styles that have been studied from time to time.

Artistes in their own right, photographers have also been known to pick and create the careers of several models. Ask any photographer in the country whose work they admire or are influenced by and almost everyone will have at least one foreign favourite.

Having said that there can be no transportation of fashion without photography. And a local fashion channel, when planning to bring out their annual calendar, understood that perfectly.

“I suggested that why not do a tribute because it was due forever. Not only that but my studio is 10 years old now and I wanted to do a salute to the photographers who have inspired me over the years,” said Amean J. the photographer responsible for the images in Salute. “At the same time, I thought it was very educational because people in the industry would know who, for example, Helmut Newton was. If they like that image and it’s on your desk, then they can search him up.”

Talking about how their plans to implement the work behind the tribute started taking shape, Amean says, “We formed a team together. We went to Nabila who was game and then a lot of other people helped us out such as Nomi Ansari, Shamoon, Sonya Battla, Nida Azwer, Ammar Belal and Yousuf Bashir Qureshi. It was fantastic as we got a bit of help from everyone, and at the end a really big team was involved in putting the whole thing together. In Lahore, Maram and Abro were a huge help because obviously I don’t have a studio there.”

So does that mean that they travelled all over Pakistan to get the shoots done? “Not everywhere, just Karachi and Lahore. The reason why we did that was because we have models who are mainly in Karachi and Lahore. We tried splitting the project into half that way. And that’s what we ended up doing — six from each city.

“I’m sure people are questioning why launch the calendar in April. Pakistan has seen some really terrible times in the last couple of months. When we were scheduled to shoot and wrap up, the country shut down. All of our schedules were thrown in the air. We decided that we’d push the calendar launch three months further and do a fresh start, starting from spring,” adds Amean.

So how did he go about recreating the work of the photographers? “The idea was to identify what the ingredients were and use them in my own little way with everything local — models, situation, designers and make-up artistes. The idea was to get influenced by some of their (photographers’) work and to ultimately educate the audiences. For example, what I did with an Ammar Belal suit under a flyover in Karachi is something that Helmut Newton might have done if he was here.”

Talking about the difficulty in pinpointing the signature ingredients in each photographer’s work, he says, “Identifying those 12 photographers was really tough. What was even tougher was identifying their ingredients. Every cook has a speciality where somebody would add a little extra mint or do their garnishing in a certain way. I’m not 100 per cent sure if I managed to decode their styles completely, but I tried my best because I’ve been looking at their work for a very long time.”

About how everyone involved got to learn about the photographers, Amean says, “While doing the project I tried to educate everyone involved with it. For example, the make-up artistes were shown works of certain photographers to get an idea that if they were working with that particular photographer, how would they deliver that kind of make-up. The same goes for the designers and models.”

Quoting a few favourites, he adds, “As you can see, in Annie’s case she really went out of her way. Or even Fayezah for that matter. She tried to be in an image that’s attempting to look like it’s been produced by Herb Ritts, but it’s actually shot in Clifton in Karachi with a home-made sculptor wearing our own Khaadi Khas outfit.”

With 12 photographers, 12 models and 12 completely different images to create, and “from concept to execution the project took at least six months, if not eight,” says Amean, adding that this was FTV’s second calendar. “The first was interesting but had a lot of problems. I also offered them design services from our studio. What happens is that a photographer does his work and then an art director takes it and does post-work on it which the photographer would not agree on.”

Talking about how his emulation of the photographers’ work is different, Amean says, “One thing we have to keep in mind is that we live in Pakistan. A lot of these photographers have had a lot of sexual content in their work. I haven’t compromised on the images themselves but there is nothing sexual about them.”

FASHION FEATURE: Behind the shoot ‘SALUTE’