Pop Art

A A A Comments By Vince Aletti Tuesday, Nov 4 2003

Philip-Lorca diCorcia's quietly spectacular exhibition, "A Storybook Life," has closed at Pace/MacGill, but another sort of show opened almost immediately in the November issue of W, where the photographer leads the magazine's fashion well with a remarkable sequence of pictures taken in São Paulo. Typically, the 13 color spreads, many of which feature local children as models, balance moments of theatrical exuberance and whimsy with a sweet, never heavy-handed gravity. Although DiCorcia's fashion photos are always far smarter than they have any need to be, these are also among his most arrestingly beautiful, and the image that ends the story—a cityscape turned disconcertingly upside down—is a genuine knockout.

photo: From Berlin, Editions 7L

Hedi Slimane's own private Berlin

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Also looking good this month: Dior menswear cult figure Hedi Slimane, whose casually sexy photographs of boys in underwear are one of several reasons to pick up the premiere issue of the latest Visionaire spin-off, Vman. Slimane, who's been photographing longer than he's been designing clothes, also contributes a series of understated black-and-white shots, made backstage at various rock concerts, that look very much like the images in Berlin, his uncommonly handsome new book from Karl Lagerfeld's 7L imprint. Combining still lifes, landscapes, abstractions, and pictures of fashionably waifish young men, the book suggests a city poised tantalizingly between stylish alienation and erotic stimulation. When's the next plane out?

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