I try so hard to find creative and intriguing editorials, particularly those which include non-white models. This is, unfortunately, close to impossible unless I want to post a photo spread with an emphasis on sexuality, violence and/or ethnicity. Every editorial has a story, but drop a non-white model and that model becomes an ambassador of Kink and/or Danger. With skin like mine in a fashion spread and suddenly an editorial is Saying Something Important. A model is a canvas, an actor in a frame, so why not give a non-white person a fair chance to play a role that goes beyond portraying the Other? I don’t think we are so stupid that we are programmed to perceive racial diversity as a flag for a diatribe or commentary on world peace or exoticism.
This editorial shoot is not as appalling as Interview Magazine’s 2010 “Let’s Get Lost” editorial. Under the guise of stunning art direction, we watch the aberration of a wilting white woman “lost” among the slick and dark skinned, let’s admit it, props. Here in this picture Daria is lost in a stupor and languidly draped over a man, her clutch dropped by her feet.
That doesn’t mean Schön is innocent either. Am I supposed to applaud the magazine for using only black models? If so, thanks for pushing it in my face that they are BLACK, that they REPRESENT BLACKNESS. This shoot started out about some motorcycle/urban bad ass but the photographer/art director/editor wanted us to make sure we know that we’re looking at Black People given the out-of-context ethnic jewelry in the story and the apperance of a topless woman because she’s just like women photographed in those African tribes in National Geographic - only with a leather jacket because she’s modern!
Seriously. WTF.
(Images via “ELOVUTION KNIGHTS” in Schön! #15 - Fashion, Take Me To The Hospital)
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