British Vogue has just run a story in its May 2009 edition called The Road to Damascus. Photographed by Tom Craig, it features Stella Tennant wearing this season's trend for sequined, shining, gilded and embellished clothing. The clothes are beautiful, the photographs are stunning - shot mostly at dusk and dawn the light shows off the clothes and the city to spectacular effect.
Pleasingly, there's nothing 'ethnic' about the clothes, no harem pants, no turbans, and in many ways Vogue resists resorting to the more obvious Orientalist cliches. But just when you're thinking that Vogue is at last reflecting the modernity of non-western countries in its editorial, it slips in a few images featuring that favourite trope, 'Man in the Background'. Not only is he alive and well, in background and indeed foreground, but he's smoking a shisha and selling carpets!
...The discourse continues. Would love to hear what any readers of this blog make of this latest offering from Vogue; do you agree with my analysis or does this lady protest too much? Am I looking for formulaic and reductive representations where they don't exist?
© all photos British Vogue
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