Dutch Fashion Photography: Liquid Bodies and Fluid Faces

Black leather jackets, white or striped T-shirts, skinny jeans and hair styled to create the perfect messy out-of-bed look. These are characteristics of the ‘French touch boys’, one of the many social groups photographed by Dutch photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek for their project Exactitudes. Versluis and Uyttenbroek are known for the special way in which they have systematically documented numerous social identities since 1994, always photographing twelve persons against a white background and arranging them on one page by four rows of three models.

Random people they encountered on the streets of various cities are categorised into many different social groups with shared dress codes and characteristics of their appearances, which is emphasised by their similar poses. Exactitudes visualises the power of the fashion system to label and construct subcultural groups, simultaneously codifying identities. The sartorial surfaces that ‘fashion’ our human bodies can thus shape codified, seemingly static and fixed social group identities.

Yet, as this chapter argues, the material objects of fashion simultaneously allow for a creative play with individuality, experimenting with identity as a fluid and flexible dimension. Fashion photography can serve as a mirror of these socio-cultural dynamics in contemporary consumer culture. In contrast to Exactitudes, which demonstrates how clothing can fix identity, there are numerous fashion photographers who focus first and foremost on the inherently dynamic nature of identity. These photographers often move between experimental and commercial work and regularly create alienating imageries of ‘fashioned’ bodies.