''Chic Clicks'' is about the near interchangeability of fashion and art photography in the newer, small-circulation art and fashion magazines like Dutch, Visionaire, Purple and Self Service. Steichen took modernism from art to fashion photography in the 1920's Man Ray and a few others added experimental photography in the 1930's.
The stylistic and innovative influences of art and art photographers on fashion illustration are pervasive and longstanding.
A catalog, published by the institute and Hatje Cantz in Germany, with essays by curators and philosophers, is sufficiently thoughtful and intermittently arcane to assure that academia has taken yet another pop-culture phenomenon to its heart. Ulrich Lehman, senior lecturer at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in England, was the guest curator for this exhibition of more than 240 photographs (along with a few films and videos) by 40 photographers in the last decade. The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston puts an up-to-the-minute slant on the first question in ''Chic Clicks: Creativity and Commerce in Contemporary Fashion Photography,'' on view through May 5.ĭr. YOU might think ''but is it art?'' is as outdated a question as ''is the bride a virgin?,'' but don't be too sure.
