There is a 30-minute video floating around the internet called “Reely and Truly,” shot by fashion photographer Tyron Lebon. It is effectively a series of what we could call “studio visits” with photographers, in which they explain their work in a very well-shot and well-edited clip. The entire video, actually, is shot on various stocks of film, and to the video’s credit, it does not trumpet this fact loudly—surely the last thing that any of us needs is another harangue about the “authenticity” of film. Here I have more or less run out of good things to say about the video, and I will now list a few bothersome things about it:
All men. Not literally of course, it just feels that way.
Fashion. No knock on Teller, but when he’s given top billing status, I can only think: “they picked the wrong German!” There are certainly people unrelated to fashion here—it can hardly be a coincidence that the most illuminating segment is with Fumiko Imano—but the momentum of the video pushes us in this direction. Scenes of Sean Vegezzi trespassing through the depths (and heights) of Manhattan represent the video’s worst fashion tendency, which is of course its misplaced gravitas.
Asia. We begin in the Southern Hemisphere, where we get a taste of “wild Asia” in Bangkok, before ten seconds of poor Aveek Sen’s disembodied voice is given to represent something (?) of India. Then on to Japan, of course, where we see—but do not hear—a caricature of Nobuyoshi Araki. Then Lebon talks to Takashi Homma, a cunning, perhaps even dangerous man who needs to be approached with guile to spare. Here, Homma has taken Lebon for a ride, masterfully spinning the tall tale of Japanese exceptionalism once again.
No Africa?
I’m sure that the director of the video would be able to explain in all sincerity why certain choices were made, and so on and so forth. To quote Mclusky 1 by way of Ivan Ilich 2, though, to hell with good intentions…