Imperfect Beauty. The Making of Contemporary Fashion Photography. - Charlotte Cotton

COTTON, Charlotte. 
Imperfect Beauty. The Making of Contemporary Fashion Photography. 
First edition. 4to. 157pp. Colour & b&w plates throughout. Paper wraps. London: V&A Publications, 2000. 

The best of 1990s British fashion photography.  Featuring the work of Nigel Shafran, Corinne Day, David Sims, Craig McDean and many others. The images, chosen by the photographers themselves, demonstrate how, during the early 1990s, British photographers, stylists and art directors ruptured the style of fashion photography, by using ordinary domestic locations, second-hand clothing and unconventional looking models. Quickly labelled "grunge photography", this became the new fashion imagery of the decade. The illustrations show how the distinctions between editorial and advertising, photography and fine art and commercial styles became blurred while the growth in the number of magazines and the rise of the internet increased the scope and availability of fashion imagery. Through interviews and photographs, a style of photography emerges which has a harder edge and challenges previously accepted stereotypes of fashion and glamour.