Thomas Brodie-Sangster broods in black and white in a Spring 2021 campaign for Celine. Creative director Hedi Slimane photographs the actor in his signature style.

Fresh off the success of his supporting role in The Queen’s Gambit, Brodie-Sangster poses for Slimane’s “Portrait of an Actor.” Capturing him in moody monochrome and making dramatic use of light and shadow, Slimane finds a nice place for the boyish heartthrob among his trademark rock-and-roll nostalgia fantasy. Brodie-Sangster poses in slim-cut suits and leather jackets, or, sometimes, no shirt at all, a folky fedora crowning his elfin features.

Though the short film’s minimalist soundtrack evokes a feeling of thoughtful melancholy and resolved tension, nothing actually happens in it. This is of course emblematic of all Slimane’s work for the house: it is consistent and visually evocative, but offers very little in the way of concept or ideas. This portrait tells us very little about this actor other than that he thinks about stuff and Hedi Slimane thinks he’s hot. But Slimane knows what he’s doing with respect to photography and the consistency of his branding, and the art direction is strong enough that the campaign can make its impact from its visuals alone.

In other news, Versace Spring 2021 ad campaign. Review of Versace Spring 2021 Ad Campaign by Donatella Versace and Creative Director Ferdinando Verderi with Photographers Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott.

Review of Celine Homme ‘Portrait of an Actor’ Spring 2021 Ad Campaign by Hedi Slimane with Thomas Brodie-Sangster.

CELINE 'PORTRAIT OF AN ACTOR' SPRING 2021 AD CAMPAIGN WITH THOMAS BRODIE-SANGSTER

He may have a reputation for being inscrutable, but Hedi Slimane is an open book indeed. Hedi Slimane Diary is a record of his interests and obsessions, an online photographic journal that the photographer and designer has been running on his website for a decade: from modernist architecture to mosh pits; surfers to street fashion; amplifiers to armpits. With equal elegance, affection and clarity, glorious beaches and scuzzy nightclubs are captured, the diamond-sharp eye of Slimane capturing subjects from ephemera, such as the pin badges on a speaker, to historical objects, such as the platform boots of David Bowie. The Diary is largely monochrome, wide-ranging in nature, taking in portraiture and still life, but its main idea is reportage, a splendid record of the activities of Slimane across youth subcultures, from concerts to clubs to rodeos. None of them are modeled, and there is no post-production, including the portraits. It is kinetic, intensely intimate, and, Slimane says, "very raw."

The Diary moves across the decade from London to Los Angeles, but the passion in the pictures doesn’t change. “We had the English period and then California. In a way they have different sensibilities, a different culture, a different time, but for me it’s still the same youth regardless.”

“I used to spend so much time there in the late 80s and early 90s, which was such a great period in New York. I haven’t been spending enough time to really document it for decades, so maybe I’ll do more things in New York.”

Since childhood, Slimane has been taking photographs; seeing him out and about without a camera in his hand is still very rare. Naturally, Hedi Slimane Diary grew out of his books on Berlin youth and the indie scene of the early 2000s, and then Rock Diary, a project he did that recorded the rise of young bands in London over the course of three years. While attending gigs, if not actually on the field, then he is right in the pit, and when he emerges, he's buzzing, he really gets in the thick of the action. Nothing but a work of love is the Hedi Slimane Diary.

“The idea of finding a subject, a character in a crowd, I’ve been doing for so long that it’s really immediate,” he says. “The sense of grace—you see it in a crowd and I notice them right away.”

Hedi Slimane Diary is an incredible, changing record of the life and sensitivity of one, but what it essentially shows is how constant the objects of his affection are - the joy generated by coming together to dance, listen to music, and form your own scene with a bunch of likeminded people. The moments are brief, but their archetypal essence, the eternal, youthful search for a sense of belonging, identity and fun, shows the accuracy of the pictures.

A diary is an open-ended project, but will Slimane’s come to an end? “Sometimes I’ve thought that I wanted to stop it,” he admits. “When Instagram started, I thought, ‘this is really close to what social media is becoming.’ There was even a moment where I wanted to shut down the entire website—to produce the same amount of work but keep it archived without any public view. The obsession with social media almost provoked the inverse reaction for me, where I think the idea of keeping creative material preserved is maybe an answer. But I still haven’t done that. I’m debating it. I guess now it’s more of a tradition, the Diary. There’s a little community that’s in the Diary that can come there and look at their own pictures. It’s almost a way to keep everyone in contact.”

In other news, Versace Pre-Fall 2021. “The collection is dedicated to all those men and women who are self-confident, aware of who they are, authentic."

“I have nostalgia for things I have probably never known. There is no irony here.” Okay. Hedi Slimane did not speak these terms, direct quoting not being his style, but in a book of posters released at the exhibition, he let the artist David Kramer say them for him. Slimane (born 1968) and Kramer (born 1963) are soul mates, destined to be pissed forever that they were born too late to taste the early '70s rock-and-roll hedonism. They didn't get to swagger high-waist flares and dandified fitted suits from Savile Row; go backstage around the Stones when they headed hippie in '67; donate Panamas seriously and grow their hair long when all that was fucking fresh and cool.

A recurring theme in this season's menswear collections has been the return of boyhood dreams. The link made by Slimane with the work of Kramer revealingly tied it all together into the same thing. In the repertoire of high-hoicked, butt-clinching boot-cut pants and jeans, tiny bomber jackets, and all the minutely noticed retail throwbacks to the rock-aristocracy trend that he marched out on the Celine runway, he laid it all out for a new generation. 

And the way he displayed it, Slimane made no compromises. In this case, a boy in a silver glitter three-piece suit, transported on a rolling throne of a thing, surmounted by disco lights, there was no variation on his long-established method of plunging his audience into darkness, the grand installation at the start.

Slimane's claim to market supremacy is fashion theme, rinsed and systematized as an affordable commodity, in this case aviators, pointy woven-leather Chelsea boots, and skinny ties. This system, his way or the highway, can seem emotionless. For his casting, it would also undoubtedly catch criticism; on what seemed to be an otherwise all-Caucasian runway, there were only three black models. In the '70s, the music scene never looked like that and today it definitely doesn't. The lack of diversity may be a safeguard for this Celine collection to talk as broadly as it could through the generation of today.

The collection checked several boxes, recording the proto-hippy moment when white kids started traveling, picking up peasant baskets and hanging out in North Africa. This season, the splendid gold-embroidered burnoose cape chimed in with many other collections at the finale. There is definitely resonance to taking up this age for a young generation that is certainly not born in happy times; Slimane's right about that. But the usual narrowness of his emphasis somehow skipped the multicultural way children see the world today.

In other news, David Koma Spring 2021 Ready-to-Wear: “Not being able to invite any guests,” he said, due to current COVID-19 rulings. “I would have loved to have staged a show there and invited 50 people to stay for dinner after,” he mused. “Maybe next time.”

“I have nostalgia for things I have probably never known. There is no irony here.” Okay.

CELINE MEN SPRING-SUMMER 2020 FASHION SHOW

Dutch model Rianne Van Rompaey is shot by Hedi Slimane in his Resort 2021 range for Celine's newest campaign. 

Van Rompaey is captured in black and white in the traditional Hedi Slimane style, alternating between studio portraiture and outdoor shots along the coast of Saint-Tropez. Van Rompaey's long and tattered hair blows softly in the wind, her freckles accentuating her neoclassical elegance, an ethereal yet earthy springtime beauty. 

One of the pictures stands out from the rest: Van Rompaey holds an apple, pulls a bite out of it and looks into the camera deeply. Of course, the picture looks reminiscent of Eve and the prohibited fruit. Slimane seems to be referring to concepts of femininity, self-knowledge, and modesty through this imagery. 

But all of this imaginative intrigue is absent from the rest of the campaign, and so it might be too much of a stretch to pull more creative sense out of it. Instead, the campaign is another solid example of the consistency and singularity of vision with which Slimane creates the image of the brand.

In other news, Y’S Spring 2021 Ready-to-Wear. It was indeed true to brand, and got straight to the point. Using natural fabrics such as Cupro, rayon and cotton, the design team succeeded in walking that very fine line between understated and interesting.

Review of Celine Resort 2021 Ad Campaign by Hedi Slimane with Rianne Van Rompaey

Since the summer of 2020, when he showed his Dancing Boy men’s collection—an ode to e-boys—on a Formula One track in the South of France, Hedi Slimane has switched his approach to documentary mode. The second half of what he called (in an email) a “portrait of a generation”—this one for girls—was also filmed in a sports venue, the Stade Louis II in Monaco. “With this collection Hedi wants to show, through the youth [and] optimism, the hope [in] this uncertain time.”

Styling and restyling the bourgeois codes of what Celine used to stand for is how he started at this house. Now, interrupting them with how they might be rehandled by French Gen Z on the street—or at home—is the name of his game.

She’s “always the Parisian but with a new energy—she listens to rap/hip-hop music”—like the track by Princess Nokia, which looped hypnotically as the models strode the circuit, their Celine-logo baseball caps and bucket hats pulled down, hands thrust in the pockets of their jeans, shorts, and ’80s style blousons.

The timeless bits of luxury fashion—like the tailored blazer, the glamorous sequined dress, and the ladylike Sulky bag—are still centrally represented: Slimane isn’t about to give up on plying that wardrobe. The difference is his sharp-eyed assessment of the way that the granddaughters of Celine’s earlier customers will likely give the posh stuff a complete dressing down. Gone are the old tropes of proper, high-heel polish. This generation will only wear flats—anything from sneakers to fluffy bedroom slides to hiking boots and Wellington boots—put crop tops under blazers, throw on nylon jackets over loose-fitting sparkly dresses and track pants under jackets.

It’s a rewritten language of style that Slimane aims to be read by youth globally. The parting shot of the film soared up through the roof of the Monegasque stadium, switched to a darkened sky, and culminated with a view of the earth seen from space. What did it signify? That our planet is beautiful and we’re still lucky to be alive on it—maybe something like that. For the anxious times that all kids are living through, that seemed to be Slimane’s small gesture of hope.

It’s a rewritten language of style that Slimane aims to be read by youth globally.

CELINE‘s luxurious in-house haute parfumerie has debuted the Coffret Miniature set, delivering nine 10ml bottles of different fragrances in a collector’s piece-like box.

Said to be “designed like an invitation to the haute parfumerie collection,” the selection comprises identical reproductions of 100ml and 200ml bottles inspired by the late 17th-century classicism and the Art Deco periods, which gives the set a very luxurious and regal feeling.

It does so by embossing the labels with 17th-century moldings and by adding black faceted caps to the tops of sharp-fluted glass bottles that allow the amber and gold tones of each fragrance to shine and dazzle when the box is opened. Inside you’ll find nine fragrances developed by Hedi Slimane that reference his olfactory journal, based on memories and stories that are sentimental to him.

It’s a vast storybook of scents. “Parade”, “Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” “Cologne Française,” “Dans Paris,” “La Peau Nue,” “Eau de Californie,” “Reptile,” “Black Tie” and “Nightclubbin’” are completely unique to themselves, each telling a different tale or journey through scent. Rounding out the luxurious air is the box itself, which is made using Grain de Poudr paper and a knotted black grosgrain bow.

Take a look at the CELINE Haute Parfumerie Coffret Miniature Set below. It is available exclusively at the label’s Harbour City and Landmark stores in Hong Kong, and is priced at $2,750 HKD (approx. $355 USD).

Taking you from “Dans Paris” to “Eau de Californie” and “Nightclubbin’.”

CELINE HAUTE PARFUMERIE'S COFFRET MINIATURE SET EXPLORES HEDI SLIMANE'S OLFACTORY JOURNAL

Hedi Slimane is a former Dior Homme and former Saint Laurent (formerly Yves Saint Laurent) creative director.

Hedi Slimane was born in 1968 in Paris, France. Graduated from Grande école, one of the most prestigious French schools in the world, with a high degree of difficulty in admission. After that, majored in art history at the Louvre Academy.

He started making clothes by himself as a teenager, but he has not received formal education. From 1992 to 1994, he joined Jose Levy and worked as a fashion director, and from 1994 to 1997 he was an assistant under Jean Jacques Piccard.

In 1997, Hedi Slimane, who was almost unknown at the time, was appointed as the artistic director of "Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Homme". Over the next three years, he will rejuvenate Yves Saint Laurent's men's line. Since 1998, he also worked on the jeans line "Saint Laurent". He left Yves Saint Laurent in 2000 in Gucci's acquisition of Yves Saint Laurent.

Two seasons later, he became the creative director of "Dior Homme" from 2001-2002 A/W. April 2002 Selected as "Designer of the Year" by CFDA. July 2003 3 year contract extension. He is also the creative director of men's fragrance.

*Dior Homme is a newly launched brand. It will be inherited by Christian Dior's men's line, the previous brand, Dior Monsieur's chief designer Patrick Lavois.

Dior Homme's designer term expires in 2007 A/W. The successor designer is Kris Van Assche.

There are various speculations that Hedi Slimane didn't continue to be a Dior Homme designer because he wanted to launch his own brand and couldn't come to terms with financial contract issues. Not known. Since then, he has been active as a photographer.

In 2012, Hedi Slimane became the creative director of Yves Saint Laurent. Oversees both men's and women's. The first collection was presented by the 2013 S/S collection.

In March 2016, he retired as the creative director of Saint Laurent. The 2016 Fall/Winter collection is the last season.

In 2018, Hedi Slimane became Celine's creative director. 

The creative director Anthony Vaccarello has hired the prolific German photographer to capture his Fall 2020 collection. Although studio photography is very rare for Teller — his style tends to be more reportage, capturing his subjects candidly in the middle of life — this campaign is an exception. Through basic studio portraiture, he captures Hartzel, using both black-and-white and color. Relying on the single set piece of a massive, sculptural lighting fixture, he sees similarities between the manner in which light plays across the multifaceted metal and the shimmering textures of Vaccarello's design. How much graphical unity and scope Teller can draw from just a few visual elements is remarkable. 

The campaign sets a clear objective: to show the power of Vaccarello's designs. Eschewing conceptual frills, compositions of Teller make subtle and clever use of pattern to accomplish this aim beautifully. 

Grace Kathleen Hartzel, of Zionsville, Indiana, is an American fashion model. At the age of only fifteen, she has been discovered while eating with her father at a St. Louis Cheesecake Factory. She "walked in almost every big show during the fall/winter 2015 and the spring/summer 2016 seasons," after being recognized in the fall/winter 2014 show as a muse of the then-YSL fashion designer Hedi Slimane. Slimane's spring 2014 show, when Grace Kathleen Hartzel has been an unknown, was "entirely made in Hartzel's image." 

Grace Kathleen Hartzel has been featured in a 2016 Salvatore Ferragamo short film, My Life is a Game, directed by Sebastien Grousset and filmed by Pawel Edelman.

Saint Laurent Creative Director | Anthony Vaccarello

In other news, Rick Owens isn't into doing anything halfway. The Paris-based California-born designer is known for some of the most controversial and envelope-pushing concepts in the fashion industry, with runway shows to suit. Yet Spring/Summer 2021 "PHLEGETHON" is another matter. The line, closely lensed by Owens himself, is a selection of repurposed pieces from the previous collections of Owens, accompanied by new designs and concepts.

Juergen Teller lenses Grace Hartzel in a new campaign from Saint Laurent.

SAINT LAURENT: #YSL33 FALL 2020 AD CAMPAIGN

Celine Homme Spring/Summer 2021 is a mixture of the diverse inspirations of Hedi Slimane, from the classical western film Johnny Guitar to TikTok. Its name, "The Dancing Kid," indicates the space between, drawing influence for its vibrant clothes from the youthful app, without departing entirely from the rocker codes of Slimane. 

Although Fall/Winter 2020 delivered sophisticated tailoring with a touch of masculine subversion, SS21 delves completely into playfully bold patterns, prints and appliqués. The sparkling LED-studded jackets, oversized flannel shirts and leopard-patterned pants seem to be tailor-made for TikTok stars — indeed, the luxury house has already posted TikTok stars' Instagram Stories like @lilhuddy and @noeneubanks — already a Celine muse — styling the next season looks on their native platform. 

Soundtracked by Tiagz's TikTok smash "They Call Me Tiago" — edited exclusively for the 12-minute presentation by Celine Homme — "The Dancing Kid" extracts inspiration from Slimane's reaction to months of isolation, imagining a wardrobe appropriate for circumstance-stifled young creatives. The brand specifically cites "e-boys and current skate culture" as central to "The Dancing Kid" as both a movie and a collection, as well as the "reclaiming the night" theme. 

Such conceits are mirrored in the collared shirts worn under the sweaters of Celine, the hanging lock-laden necklaces and the ripped or "lacerated" Slimane's signature skinny jeans, seen stacked on top of the latest Z Trainers of Celine Homme. Tie-dyed layering pieces and knit beanies give the tiger stripe ponchos texture and sleeveless leather jackets that are reminiscent of the nightlife staples of yesteryear, while plaid tops, trendy eyewear and branded bags are a perfect fit for consumers of genre-fluid Gen Z. 

See "THE DANCING KID" in detail below and on the website of Celine.

In other news, Rick Owens isn't into doing anything halfway. The Paris-based California-born designer is known for some of the most controversial and envelope-pushing concepts in the fashion industry, with runway shows to suit. Yet Spring/Summer 2021 "PHLEGETHON" is another matter. The line, closely lensed by Owens himself, is a selection of repurposed pieces from the previous collections of Owens, accompanied by new designs and concepts. 

Channels E-Boys and Skaters in Confinement.

Photographed in St. Tropez on the southern coast of France by artistic director Hedi Slimane, the campaign highlights the Celine house's latest Plein Soleil collection. The young model offers an effortlessly cool energy coupled with a natural beauty that fits perfectly with the last days of summer feeling. Slimane captures her in his black-and-white signature style, seeking a sense of soft harmony between his subject and the surrounding wildflowers and trees. 

Though understated and softly stunning, the campaign forms a significant moment for Celine. Recently, Hedi Slimane faced criticism and accusations of racism, and his personal instagram account – which consists of his creative work and does not feature a single non-white person – was pointed out as clear evidence. Celine's account is faring a little better. Especially in the reign of the Black Lives Matter movement, concerns were raised about whether there was no deep tension between what Celine values as a brand, and who its creative director is as an individual and artist. 

This campaign is only a beginning to rectifying those issues, but it is a beautiful one. The presence of black models and other people of color should be a norm, not something that needs to be celebrated, so it's awesome to see these Mombot images so naturally and beautifully integrated into Celine's existing aesthetics. She's a young model and a fresh face – this is her first big campaign, and it appears to be one of her best ever ads – and Celine has helped her make a beautiful first impression. We are superexcited to see where her career is heading, and hoping to see more progress from Celine.

Essoye Mombot stars in a new campaign from Celine.

CELINE FALL 2020 AD CAMPAIGN WITH ESSOYE MOMBOT

Celine has collaborated with the foundation for a limited-edition series of necklaces that recalls the French sculpture César Baldaccini. 

Baldaccini has been at the forefront of the Nouveau Réalisme movement and is known for his art of compression, frequently turning scrap metal from vehicles or ordinary garbage into geometric sculptures. In 1959, the artist began exploring his art of Directed Compressions when he first saw how a heavyweight hydraulic crushing machine worked. 

Hedi Slimane at Celine has gained inspiration from the artist by producing two fine jewelry pieces for the French house — one necklace made of sterling silver and leather, and the other of gold vermeil and leather. There are only 100 of each necklace, and all are numbered and packed individually in special pinewood cases. 

The collaboration is organic, as Baldaccini used to make jewelry too. The artist would gather fragments, heirlooms, and antiques from his family and would remold them into new totemic necklaces — which these new Celine necklaces so clearly relate to. All necklaces are rectangular, and have compact metal carvings all over them. 

Take a look at the necklaces of the Celine César Compression Project. Both are now available to buy at select Celine boutiques. The sterling silver piece is retailing at $4,100 USD while the gold vermeil piece is at $5,400. 

César Baldaccini was once commissioned to paint a McLaren F1 GTR in 1995, which took part in Le Mans' famous 24 Hours. The Chassis GTR5 car is still in the livery that César created, and represents the only 'Art Car' based on the iconic Mclaren. 

Examples of César Baldaccini's work can be seen at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (Facel Véga) and in the permanent collection of the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (Bas relief, Tortue, le Diable). Baldaccini also designed his own grave at the Montparnasse Cemetery, on the esplanade de La Défense (Le Pouce), in Marseille on Hamburg Avenue between the MAC and the Bonneveine Centre (Le Pouce Géant). One of Baldaccini's most iconic pieces, Conserve expansion - Martial Raysse (1970-1972), is at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte in Lugano. In the early 1990s the Frenchman Flying was mounted in Hong Kong.

Designer Rick Owens has been referencing César Baldaccini in his interviews mentioning that he's been inspired by his work while creating his own earlier collections.

Made from sterling silver or gold vermeil.

CELINE X CÉSAR BALDACCINI: THE LIMITED-EDITION COMPRESSION PROJECT NECKLACES

Olympus today announced it sells its camera business to Japan Industrial Partners (JIP). Olympus — once one of the biggest camera brands in the world — will now focus on supplying industrial and medical imaging equipment. Although the company said it had improved cost structure, worked on high-profit cameras and took steps to "cope with the extremely complicated digital camera market," it reported three consecutive fiscal years of operating losses. 

In 1936, Olympus made its first camera, the Semi-Olympus I. The costly accordion-line camera started off Olympus' camera business. In 1996, it launched the first digital camera, and established the interchangeable lens system Micro Four Thirds trademark. Smartphones have therefore eroded the need for mirrorless cameras. In 2011, Olympus, while being one of the largest companies by market share at the time, has also been involved in a $1.7 billion accounting scandal. 

"We're asking for your patience: we believe this is the right step to preserve the legacy of our brand, the products and the value of our technology," explained the company on Facebook. "Olympus sees this potential transfer as an opportunity to enable our imagery business to grow and delight both long-term and new photography enthusiasts." Meanwhile, JIP has revealed plans to streamline the business, as it has done with Sony's VAIO PC. This will make cameras "more lightweight, more powerful and more agile." 

The Olympus scandal has precipitated on 14 October 2011 when British-born Michael Woodford was suddenly ousted as Chief Executive Officer of Olympus Corporation. He had been president of the company for six months, and two weeks before he had been promoted to chief executive when, according to The Wall Street Journal, he exposed "one of the largest and longest-running loss-hiding arrangements in Japanese corporate history". The chairman of the board, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who appointed Woodford to these positions, again assumed the title of CEO and president. The incident raised questions about the tobashi schemes' resilience, and the quality of Japanese corporate governance. 

Apparently irregular acquisition payments had resulted in very significant asset impairment charges in the company's accounts, and this was exposed in an article in the Japanese financial magazine FACTA and came to the attention of Woodford. Japanese press speculated on Yakuza (Japanese organized crime syndicates) connection. Olympus defended themselves against charges of corruption.

*Fashion designers Thierry Mugler and Hedi Slimane, both also talented photographers, have been using Olympus equipment throughout their careers.

In 2011, Olympus attracted worldwide media scrutiny when it fired its CEO and the matter snowballed into a corporate corruption investigation with multiple arrests. It paid $646 million in kickback fines in 2016.

OLYMPUS SELLS ITS CAMERA BUSINESS AFTER 84 YEARS

"Black has a spectral nature — on the one hand it's very dominant, powerful, and intimidating, while on the other it's kind of vulnerable, melancholic, and sensitive." For London-based photographer Marcus Schaefer, the color black has a compelling power — it can articulate the complexity of emotions and translate them into avenues of personal escape. 

Hailing from southern Germany, Schaefer took up photography as a creative venture to explore the world around him during his student years at the Academy of Fashion and Design in Munich. He slowly matured his photography style after improving his skills and understanding the industry through an internship at a photographer's studio, one that embraces the emotional dimension of black and white aesthetics. 

With competition on the market steadily increasing, and amateur content threatening the value of photography, Schaefer addresses how uphill battles are attempts at individual communication and unique storytelling. "Although photography offers a variety of freedoms, in a digital world flooded with images and other artists trying to do the same, it is still very hard to find your individual voice," he says. The photographer's driving force is counteracting these emotions with a sense of excitement and a growing desire to capture his current state of mind. "Being a freelance photographer can often come with a lot of downtime between jobs and also the accumulation of creative energy and ideas that urge release," he adds. 

Schaefer is finding avenues of escape and communication through the visual aesthetics of black and white photography in a world overwhelmingly dominated by color images. His photographs are questioning the false preconception that black and white photography is obsolete and less expressive by exploring intimacy, openness and abstraction. The photographer places the black color at the core of his work, using it as a central component of his visual messaging. Black is newly interpreted in creative ways, as the absence of color and the absorption of light. To create a complex network of new meanings in the images, Schaefer overturns the paradigm of black and white — black acquires weakness and softness, becoming the object of a modern embroidery of representation. 

His work is never merely conventional, as shown by the selection of images in this feature: philosophical pictures, traversing between figuration and abstraction, offering delight in the imperfection. There are also still lives and images of the scenery, which establish a picture of seductive allure. Schaefer's compelling commitment to monochrome and the emotional tenor casts a unifying net over the disparate genres of photography. The heterogeneous images, grouped together, extend the creative potential of the medium, conveying both the arenas in which Schaefer participates and the spaces he deliberately creates for his art. 

Schaefer's artistic work reflects tranquility that is sensual and haunting. "The photography has a spectral nature," he says. "It may have a dark dimension that consumes it — something between life and the afterlife. I'm very intrigued by that and it's very much in line with my obsession with the 'black' non-color." Schaefer explores this 'between' experience; his surreal images torment us with their eerie reverberation of the unseen. This spectrality is accentuated through image manipulation. With poses, arrangements, mirrors, distortions, altered light levels and minimal retouching, he adds a surreal twist, creating an interplay between fiction and reality. 

Schaefer does not care about technical perfection; instead, he is intrigued by spontaneity and imprecision. "My approach to photography and the techniques that I use are often meant to encourage the error in a picture in order to obtain unplanned and unintended results." The element of error in all his creative endeavors is fundamental. "Working on my drawings helped honor this particular 'error' in photography, as these mistakes occur a lot when I draw," he explains. Schaefer is also a painter and a drawer, beyond photography, he uses his holistic understanding of art to inform his photographic choices and evocative storytelling. "Drawing helps me to understand my photographic path, and to guide it." "Over time, charcoal drawings have become my visual compass and I now consider them to be some kind of umbilical cord connecting those two worlds of me." 

Photography and drawing merge seamlessly into his work, creating new concepts within his work while arresting all feelings and capturing his individual truth perception. "I want to allow one form to merge into another and to create a certain otherworldliness by blurring outlines and modulating tones," he continues. This results in images that are almost a hybrid type of painting, containing complex, whimsical, and abstracted compositions that unleash his intuitive style and energize it further. "The very notion of a managed chaos, the harmonious arrangement of objects and the interplay of lights and shadows have become firm components in both mediums of my artistic vision," he continues. 

"I prefer not to film the exact image of something, but to capture my own perception of what's in front of my eyes. It's more about creating a particular atmosphere or feeling than static reality reproduction." His pictures extend the reality of their subjects while telling us something about how the photographer relates to the world. He gives the viewers the ability to own fragments of his own reality in this. "I love to take the viewer on a journey through my mind and the visual world; to produce images that channel my energies of visions and thoughts, rather than capturing the exact likeness of life as we know it and live it every day," he continues. 

What distinguishes the work of Schaefer is not only the virtuosity with which he presents comparisons, but the fact that he creates imagery in direct dialog with one's own emotional domain. Not only does he imprint on the photos his creative personality but he wants his pictures to reflect the emotions that created them. "My drawings and photographs both depict an emotional communication with the audience — the perception of individuals is never really identical and that's what I love about them," he concludes.

Oftentimes, fashion designers find themselves in photography creating beautiful visual range coherent with their collections. Hedi Slimane, Thierry Mugler are amongst them. You should definitely check out Hedi Slimane's photo diary. What do you think about his art?

Schaefer is being intrigued by how we experience imagery in today's digital world; one that is characterized by the multiplicity and ease of capturing, circulating, sharing and disposing images.

MARCUS SCHAEFER: EMBODYING EMOTIONS VIA PHOTOGRAPHY

Perhaps the most famous thing about Shelley Duvall is the fact that the Hollywood starlet of the 70s was an entirely unintended household name. Growing up in Texas, she wanted to become a scientist before director Robert Altman plucked her from a Houston party and put her in his Brewster McCloud comedy film. The two would go on together to make other movies, including "3 Women", for which Duvall won the Cannes Best Actress Award. Duvall's quirky personality and charm helped her perform a number of roles throughout her career, lovingly known as "The Texas Twiggy" for her doe-eyed similarity to the famed 60s model. "She looks and sounds like almost no other," wrote film critic Roger Ebert, who interviewed her shortly after the 1980 release of The Shining. "There is an openness about her in all her parts, as if something had happened between her open face and our eyes – no camera, voice, make-up, acting system – and she's just being the character naturally." As Stanley Kubrick's classic horror movie turns 40, we look back on some of the iconic roles and similarly iconic looks that made Duvall an unexpected style icon of the 1970s. 

The first film role for Duvall was that of Suzanne Davis, a part-time race car driver and loner Brewster's love interest in Altman's experimental comedy, Brewster McCloud. Her looks vary from a complete tangerine-haired clown to a classic red striped T-shirt, most suitably worn as a top, all overlapped with the long Twiggy-esque under eyelashes that received her nickname. As the story goes, Altman met her at her own party as the stunning 20-year-old college student, and asked her to be on the spot in his upcoming film. "I said, 'Oh, no, a porn movie," because when I was 17 in a drugstore, I'd been approached for that," she told Andy Warhol. But Duvall signed a 5-year acting contract while filming Brewster McCloud, and never looked back. 

The budding young actress was photographed by Bert Stern to promote Duvall's film debut in Brewster McCloud, and made her much more glamorous debut on Vogue's pages. The shoot was influenced by the brightly colored, quirky looks of the film, not unlike the regular fits of Duvall's own (after all, she wore a bright pink flared dress, green linen boots and a pink and green silk shawl to meet Warhol). She would wear a cream knitted coat-dress, orange patterned tights and lace-up, capped purple tow boots. And the hair!

Filming The Shining, which is probably Duvall's most well-known role, was far from a fun experience for the actress with her trademark layered overalls and striking jet black makeup. Getting into character as Wendy Torrance, who's husband (Jack Nicholson) turns into a terrorizing killer, was "nearly unbearable," as Stanley Kubrick is said to have been on the set almost as terrorizing her — wanting her to feel isolated and disintegrated as Wendy herself was. "I was always in and out of ill health because the role was so overwhelming," she says in "The Complete Kubrick." "Stanley pushed me and prodded me harder than I've ever been pushed before. It's the hardest role I've ever had to play." After the film, she went back to Altman to play Olive Oyl alongside Robin Williams' Popeye.

Designers Yohji Yamamoto, Andre Courreges, Rick Owens, Thierry Mugler, Hedi Slimane, Gareth Pugh have created costumes for cinema, theatrical play and opera. Involvement into costume design is being indeed an important landmark on every designer's service record.

As Stanley Kubrick's classic horror movie turns 40, we look back on some of the iconic roles and similarly iconic looks that made Duvall an unexpected style icon of the 1970s. 

Today's economy requires ingenuity from all its citizens. But, as art and entrepreneurship continue to coagulate into a single industry, what creativity exactly is has become increasingly unclear. The manager's figure used to be an antithesis to the artist. Agents were seen as powerful delegation champions, the artist was supposed to be volatile, bohemian and divinely influenced. It now appears that success in the age of convergence needs a counterintuitive function between the two positions. As artists struggle to meet demands that resemble those placed on global businesses, said companies face the pitfalls of their archaic organizational models. The solution to this crisis is much more complex than those studios that resemble garage-like factories and offices. 

Wolfgang Ullrich is a German cultural theorist and art historian. In addition to consumer theories and socio-iconography, his work is concerned with the history, development and critique of our concept of art. His latest publication Der kreative Mensch explores how the idea of creativity in Western culture has developed from a divine gift into a commonly anticipated power. 

Ullrich shared his views about people who use smartphones and consider themselves creative. (Apple launched a worldwide award competition for the most beautiful iPhone photograph. Similarly, their current billboard campaign does not advertise telephony, but a built-in camera on the phone.) 

Ullrich explained that the smartphone had not yet been invented, when this dogma of creativity asserted itself. Back then, traditional forms of the creative drive were still concerned, mostly that of expression. Originally, creativity meant the expressive – letting down one's hair, painting some watercolors, perhaps doing handicrafts. We've reached phase two with the smartphone, which involves social milieus that were not previously encouraged to be innovative. Now they're photographing, doing craft snaps, working on their posts. Ullrich is not sure whether they are inclined to call themselves creative. Since this first period of expressiveness, something that has gained much more importance is that now you have to always factor in a sort of feedback. Caution. You count your followers, their likes and comments, their retweets and their shares. Its focus is less on personal issues than it was in phase one. This is a clear contrast from that of the seventies or eighties, which saw the idea of imagination closely related to self-discovery. An Instagram account does not incentivise self-discovery. But what these apps offer is a technology that flatters all. The software flatters. A contemporary style is represented here. Just as historical art styles used to exist, we now have styles within photo apps. Surely, in 100 years people will be creating entirely different images and amused by those of our time.

If you haven't yet, check the work of the two iconic French designers André Courrèges and Thierry Mugler - yet more proof that a talented person is talented at everything. Daniel Arsham and Hedi Slimane are the contemporary example to this statement.

Originally, creativity meant the expressive – letting down one's hair, painting some watercolors, perhaps doing handicrafts. We've reached phase two with the smartphone, which involves social milieus that were not previously encouraged to be innovative.

WOLFGANG ULLRICH: CREATIVITY IN THE INTERSECTION POINT

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