Spring Projects' exhibition of British fashion photography at Liberty's is an undeniably pretty affair.
It takes a good ten minutes of gleeful wandering round Liberty's glorious fourth floor, an Aladdin's cave of the most wondrous of furniture wonders – greedily and rather excitedly earmarking coffee tables and kitsch little rocking chairs, and busily reeling off an infinite wish list – for us to realise that an exhibition of cutting edge fashion photography, Oh! You Pretty Things, is in our midst. As we drag ourselves away from the retro 1950s desks, and intriguing little cupboards – Tom's got his eye on a brightly upholstered armchair and mentally trying to calculate how many years of counting coppers it would take to meet the rather large price tag – I see why it's so easy to momentarily overlook the fact that this is an exhibition space, displaying a rather good showcase of British fashion photography at that.
That's not to say these works don't have power in their own right; they most certainly do. The extravagant, borderline garish and the “everyday burlesque” are venerated by Alice Hawkins in her lifestyle portraits of real people captured in their own personal space. The ostentatious, proud demeanour of her over the top subjects drenched in jewels and pictured surrounded by doilies and dogs in Blackpool, flamingos at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, and sitting side by side Simba the dozing lion or Victoria the Bengal tiger in Las Vegas, drip with a kind of classless but by no means always inexpensive glamour.
Josh Olins and Angelo Pennetta seem to follow a similar stylised tack. The youthful pop culture offerings from Olins are striking images of sumptuously dressed flighty models all wide-eyed and open mouthed. Twin Peaks in particular is a favourite – featuring two women with KKK/bishop like black mitres, black nails, black lips, heavy Kohl-lined eyelids and little black dresses. It's all a very angular, sharp, angst-poser yet effortlessly cool affair. Angelo Pennetta's offerings follow as a humorous take on celebrity lifestyle. Photos of Marston and Cooper Hefner at the Playboy mansion holding pink-rinsed little dogs, or model Lara Stone half-munching, half-smoking a carrot are laughable, yet tinged with suggestive allure and bold, knowing stares.
The balanced, posed, highly expressive Jacob Sutton pieces, incorporate random props and are a bit more mainstream (if such a thing ever exists in the fashion world). Indeed thanks to their tension, elegance and interesting shapes they look like they've come straight from a magazine. Which they probably have.
By far my favourite pieces though are the cold, Puritan, seemingly Henry James' Turn of the Screw-inspired works of Daniel Jackson. The vacancy of these compositions – in particular the Guinevere nude shots capturing a figure kneeling on floorboards or perching on an old table, shot in cold light, starkly contrast the pale pallor of the model's naked body with her black, tightly swept bun and piercingly expressionless eyes. These images are a severe and haunting celebration of physicality and the contours of the human body first confined in a shroud-like restrictive outfit and then released.
As we leave, with one final sweep of the floor, eyeing up the rather special upholstery for the last time I am rather sad to bid the pretty things farewell. And what pretty things they are.
Oh! You Pretty Things is at Liberty's until 14.03.10.
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