Better Lives Blog #1 – Power
I was very happy to be handed so many different lectures about themes like diversity, sustainability and social responsibility. And they really made me think about my own influence and responsibility as a fashion photographer in the industry. And some of the things they said have really woken me up. The first lecture on 10-2-2020 especially, Julia Crew was there to talk about power in relation to fashion, money, media, protest, and others that are all very intertwined with each other.
Over the centuries fashion has been used as a visual tool to communicate power and wealth amongst other things. Some examples are royalty were they display their wealth, the military with their uniforms and batches and stars to show unity, hierarchy and leaderships, and with media people have the power to influence big audiences or ‘markets’ with what they wear. And what I really want to go further in is media and the amount of power and influence it has gained over the past two decades. Apparently millennials are 84 % more likely to buy something from an influencer, someone that they don’t even know on Instagram. The internet is very trend focused and I believe that because of it going so fast, it is one of the reasons why fast fashion has grown so much in these past few years. People can get bored so much faster and keep wanting more, they want to keep themselves new for every Instagram post, event, etcetera. Because we constantly see these apparent perfect beautiful models wearing these sponsored clothes or shoes and we feel as if those things make a happier life, whilst it just causes us to feel inferior or insecure. This all sounds very negative and I get sick of only talking about the negative things of media. It is not going to go anytime soon so we have to find a way to make it have a positive impact on our lives, otherwise why do we even bother looking at things that make us sad and bitter… I say we use it to communicate the things that actually matter. You can use it to show how many beautiful things you found while thrifting in a charity shop and show how you styled it. You can use it to protest, and to let others know what your opinions are. My power as a photographer is to show simple opinions in visual language, the kind that is universal.