Live Project: Sittings
Sittings is a series of live fashion stills created by menswear stylist Simon Foxton. At selected times during the exhibition, a different model was styled in an outfit by a different fashion designer. The model could be contacted by phoning the number shown. The installation is a recreation of a broadcast on SHOWstudio.com in 2005, which aimed to replace the selective focus of a photographer with the impartial gaze of a live webcam. After using an interactive casting booth to select thirty models, each day, over a month, Foxton styled a different man in an outfit by a different fashion designer. He then composed them to sit in front of a webcam that broadcast a still image on SHOWstudio.com that refreshed every sixty seconds. Over a period of four hours, the site’s viewers could log on to watch the models maintain their pose whilst reading, eating, listening to music or taking questions via the phone number posted under the ‘living fashion plate’ online. As companion pieces to Nick Knight’s More Beautiful Women films (2000–), the 2005 Sittings film edits explored the distance between the still image and its motion counterpart by subjecting a single shot to scrutiny over a period of time. In the absence of a photographer’s spoken direction or the continual click of a stills camera, the films draw attention to the individual performances that each model brings to the stylist’s initial vision.
Sittings is a series of live fashion stills created by menswear stylist Simon Foxton. At selected times during the exhibition, a different model was styled in an outfit by a different fashion designer. The model could be contacted by phoning the number shown. The installation is a recreation of a broadcast on SHOWstudio.com in 2005, which aimed to replace the selective focus of a photographer with the impartial gaze of a live webcam. After using an interactive casting booth to select thirty models, each day, over a month, Foxton styled a different man in an outfit by a different fashion designer. He then composed them to sit in front of a webcam that broadcast a still image on SHOWstudio.com that refreshed every sixty seconds. Over a period of four hours, the site’s viewers could log on to watch the models maintain their pose whilst reading, eating, listening to music or taking questions via the phone number posted under the ‘living fashion plate’ online. As companion pieces to Nick Knight’s More Beautiful Women films (2000–), the 2005 Sittings film edits explored the distance between the still image and its motion counterpart by subjecting a single shot to scrutiny over a period of time. In the absence of a photographer’s spoken direction or the continual click of a stills camera, the films draw attention to the individual performances that each model brings to the stylist’s initial vision.
