Gavin Bond’s photographs, collected in the new book ‘Being There,’ include rare snapshots of Vivienne Westwood, glimpses of Kate Moss at the start of her career, and looks at the obsessive work of Karl Lagerfeld.
Could Gavin Bond take these same photographs today? His answer, without hesitation, is no. The photographer—English by birth, a New Yorker by choice—knows that the era he captured in his bookis gone forever. Stella Tennant has died, as have Karl Lagerfeld and Vivienne Westwood. His photographic playground, the backstage of the catwalks of fashion shows, is no longer the place it was in 1993.
In 1993, however, Bond was the one of the few to take his camera into this intriguing world. As a young student at London’s prestigious Saint Martin’s School of Art, he started shooting the fashion shows of his fellow students, including John Galliano. He eventually got to know a producer, John Wolford, who acted as a liaison between the students and fashion professionals.
Bond used a compact film camera on his backstage outings, a Bronica ETR-Si, small and discreet enough not to disturb his subjects. His photos from this period came to define his style: in place of staged fashion shots, he produced photo-reportage, bringing a journalistic approach that was reminiscent of the work of Frank Horvat. “The great photographers of the time were invited to fashion shows by the brands,” Bond recalls.
The photos of the Vivienne Westwood fashion show attracted the interest of all the leading couturiers of the day. Bond would infiltrate the fashion houses of his friend John Galliano, then the head of Dior, as well as Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, and Jean-Paul Gaultier. His shots, first in black-and-white and later in color, captured the golden age of supermodels from a unique angle.
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