Subjectivity, interpretation, perspectives. For the campaign celebrating the Prada Symbole handbag, three artists approached the same subject matters - the Symbole, and the actor Hunter Schafer - in a series of divergent and distinct portraits. Three artists, three sides of Prada, three points of view.
A triptych in its conception, the campaign is created by three of art’s modern masters: Catherine Opie, Thomas Ruff and Carrie Mae Weems, symbolic and powerful names, whose work has rarely, if ever, been printed in the form of a fashion campaign. While respecting the processes and meanings inherent to both art and fashion, each questions and challenges the other, to create works that explores the blurred boundaries between these disciplines through mutual exchange.
Each artist regards the same figure, and the same object, but their practices, methodology and results are wildly individual. Like the Symbole itself, different sides - different facets - are discovered. Each series of images connects to a cannon of artistic expression: Opie’s work revolves around the body and identity, new codes of beauty - her images seem to sculpt Schafer into a series of triangles, fusing woman and object, Ruff’s reinterprets ready-made images, distorting and manipulating reality - the objective value of a photograph, it questions our ideas of image. Weems connects her imagery to concepts of identity, representation, projection - notions of transformation and courage.
Before each of their lenses, Schafer transforms - an act that, through the art of its creators, reflects her own craft as an actor. The campaign images become character studies - of Hunter Schafer, and the Symbole - composed of triangles, a graphic representation of the codes of Prada.
