EXHIBITION
Couture Culture
Snap! Space presents ‘COUTURE CULTURE,’ an exhibit which at once idealizes and deconstructs the notion of fashion and beauty. Featuring works from renowned beauty, fashion and fine art artists/photographers from New York, Paris, Warsaw and Los Angeles, Couture Culture presents diverse viewpoints on beauty and its evolution through the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibit curated by Holly and Patrick Kahn.
On August 1962, at the age of 27, Kirkland was appointed by Look Magazine to document the working progress of an upcoming fashion show by Coco Chanel. Kirkland fixed his lens on Coco for twenty-one days, capturing the public and private moments of the legend herself. Kirkland joined Look Magazine and later Life Magazine during the golden age of 60s/70s photojournalism.Among his assignments were fashion and celebrity work, photographing Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Orson Welles, and Marlene Dietrich, among others. Kirkland’s fine arts photography work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Eastman House in Rochester, and the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles.
We are delighted to present Cheyco Leidmann’s work on the occasion of the 35th Year Anniversary of ‘Foxy Lady.’ In 1980, Cheyco Leidmann established a new cutting edge style of visual expressionism with hyperreal colors, which influenced an entire generation of photographers, fashion designers and cinephiles. Leidmann’s ‘Foxy Lady’ monograph was chosen by Vogue as one of the nine cult classic art books of the last five decades, and garnered numerous prestigious awards, including the New York Creative Directors Club Gold Award. Cheyco Leidmann works closely with his creative director Ypsitylla von Nazareth.
French photographer Isabelle Chapuis offers a delicate organic perspective to fashion and beauty imagery. The series ‘Etamine,’ for instance, created in collaboration with botanic artist Duy Anh Nhan Duc, is connected to the ergonomics of the human body: a fragile composition of thousands of petals which harmoniously blend with the skin of the models, creating beautiful botanic creatures. Isabelle was the recipient of the ‘Prix Picto de la Jeune Photographie de Mode’ and her work was published in Citizen K, M le Magazine du Monde. She has shown in galleries in Paris, Hong Kong and China. Snap! is proud to introduce her work for the first time in the U.S.
Born in Romania, Kristian emigrated with his family at an early age to Germany. He studied fashion design with Vivienne Westwood and photography with F.C. Gundlach at the University of Fine Arts Berlin. After his initial introduction by Isabella Blow to Condé Nast Publications in London, Kristian has continued working internationally with various fashion magazines, and has published two books.
Polish photographer Szymon Brodziak, whose work oscillates between fashion and portrait photography, has been published in fashion magazines around the world, including Italian Vogue. He is a three times Gold Medal recipient at Prix de la Photographie Paris. Szymon’s work is currently on exhibit at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, alongside Helmut Newton and Frank Horvat. He was introduced to the U.S market by Snap! Orlando in 2013.
Dina Litovsky was born in Ukraine and moved to New York in 1991. Litovsky’s work examines social performances and group interactions in both public and private spaces. For decades, Fashion Week has been the ultimate, highly exclusive pageant for the fashion aristocracy. Dina Litovsky’s series ‘Fashion Lust’ dismantles the carefully packaged and highly indulgent viral fashion image. The images investigate the scene where the expertly constructed image of guests rivals the air-brushed glamour of the actual show. Dina’s works have been published in Time Magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic, Stern Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek and Wired.
Dvir’s series ‘Coming Soon’ explores the relationship between near-future illusions and physical reality. Billboards both dominate the urban landscape and blend into the background. People inhabiting the space underneath are pulled, unaware, into a staged set, where the reality of the street merges with the commercial fantasy of the advertisement. Natan Dvir’s various works have been published by The New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Stern, The Times, Daily Mail, Paris Match, Le Monde and has been exhibited at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Anastasia Photo Gallery in New York, and Christie’s in London.
‘Sculpturings’ are beautifully created pieces redefined beyond their traditional sense, each piece with unique form and storytelling, blending luxury with urban activism relevant to current social issues. Rebecca sketches, assembles, carves, invests, kiln fires, and casts her own work in her studio. Rebecca Rose’s Sculpturings are linguistically inspired and many pieces have a socially aware theme as a prefix and the word “ring” as its suffix. Rebecca’s work has been exhibited at Art Basel Miami, Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art, Spoke Art Gallery, and Snap! Space. Rebecca lives and works in her home-atelier in Orlando.