TORN is a selection of images taken from the final project work of London College of Fashion, UAL's MA Fashion Photography graduating cohort (18/19). Each project is uniquely researched and developed within the last phase of the course, where the students negotiate a more expansive industry to establish an individual practice that is sustainable and relevant over the longer term.
The work engages with fashion at a variety of levels, and so it should; fashion is complex and multiplex, and is already the inexhaustible material for the camera. But a more advanced and conceptual interplay between photography and fashion extends this to impact and contribute more broadly to visual culture and representation, combining personal interests and professional aspirations across a global context.
The course seeks to disrupt a fashion photography whose sole purpose is subservient to the promotion and consumption of fashion and its industry. Although this might suggest a commercial conflict, in fact the emergence of a moral dilemma within contemporary society for the fashion photographer is too obvious to ignore. This observation and other such ontologies necessarily become the material and currency for fashion photography at this level, and instead fashion becomes subservient to the realisation of project work that asserts new agendas, markets and audiences.
Over the last 10 years, the course has become a magazine of successes stories and a community of graduates continue to win awards and commissions, and are continuously visible through publications and exhibitions across the world.
Check out the work at OXO Gallery, open until 1 March 2020. Entry to this event is free.
Location: Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, South Bank, London, SE1 9PH
Dates: 27 February 2020 - 1 March 2020
Opening Times: 11am - 6pm
Header image: Suthathip Saepung, MA Fashion Photography. Body images L - R: Yang Han-Time and Stalin Marimuthu, MA Fashion Photography.