Fashion And Social Communication - Nick Knight

“Fashion is an extension of dressing. It’s a very important social factor. It amuses me that fashion and fashion photography are treated so poorly intellectually. Cultural intellectuals tend to feel they’re not qualified to discuss fashion photography, or that it’s a waste of time. I even get correspondence across the forums at SHOWstudio from people who think fashion is evil. There’s a lack of understanding, a moral dismissal, and an anger that fashion, and by extension fashion photography, is a wasteful, criminal thing. I quite like that agitation and aggression, because I don’t believe it. In a society where your first encounter with people tends to be visual, you’re sort of saying “This is who I am.” I can’t imagine a society that doesn't adorn and decorate itself and doesn't use its outer appearance in some way as a social communication.” -Nick KnightNick Knight is a great photographer, who pushed visual boundaries, and isn't afraid of provoking and talking about the racial, sexual and visual discrimination of the fashion-industry, especially of fashion magazines. But he is also trying to change things, and founded the fashion online-mag SHOWstudio, which he is directing since 2000. Too avoid the long bureaucratic ways, the partisan choices, and the economical dictates of the common fashion-medias, he was one of the first to start a fashion-website to reach out to a worldwide community.
“SHOWstudio is based on the belief that showing the entire creative process—from conception to completion—is beneficial for the artist, the audience and the art itself.” (Nick Knight)

For all German readers, you can find an interview with Nick Knight made by SPEX here.